Cárdenas, Carolina

After completing her basic studies in London, she returned to Bogotá in 1928 and enrolled in the School of Fine Arts. Due to the delicacy of her works, evoked from the concept of the elegant figure finely decorated with borders and geometric strokes, she was dubbed "Miss Deco" by some critics. She posed for the artist and her personal friend, Francisco Antonio Cano, who left two portraits of the artist for our culture, which are housed in the National Museum of Colombia, among many others he made for her. Alongside Sergio Trujillo Magnenat, a fellow student at the School of Fine Arts and a very close friend, they worked on an aesthetic and artistic concept through photography; they didn't just take portraits but created scenographies with artistic concepts, elements, and suitable costumes for the creation of the work they wanted to build. She associated with artists such as Ramón Barba and Josefina Albarracín, who were also part of the artistic movement called Bachue; renowned ceramic artists in the Colombian artistic field. She was also friends with the decorator Elvira Martínez and Hena Rodríguez, an artist and ceramicist with whom she also had a romantic relationship. She introduced the Art Deco concept to Colombia with a series of stylized drawings and figures of women, with confident and defined strokes, implementing dark and golden colors with simple and clean geometric shapes, paving the way for the introduction of abstract art into our culture. She stood out for creating very geometric original pieces in ceramics (a new artistic trend of the time), where she explored most of her talent. She held the first exhibition of her works—teapots, lamps, vases, among other pieces—alongside her friend and colleague Sergio Trujillo Magnenat; the exhibition took place at the Colombian Society of Engineers in February 1936, promoted by the Minister of Education at the time, Jorge Zalamea. The exhibition was widely commented on in the press since, until that moment, ceramics did not have a connotation in Colombian art of the time, much less stylized, geometric pieces with Bauhaus influence.