Enrique Grau (Colombian 1920-2004)

Juegos Nocturnos represents an important period in the artist's trajectory. The artist himself considered it a major example in the development of his oeuvre, to the extent that he explicitly requested it for a retrospective held throughout several galleries in Bogotá in 1991 to mark the 50th anniversary of his artistic production.

This painting was finished in early 1957 in Florence, where Enrique Grau studied and lived for several years. Afterwards it was included in a solo exhibition in Rome, and was also part of several individual and group exhibitions. For many years, it had not been shown and was only discovered in a Boston gallery in 1974, along with other paintings by the artist from the same period.

Born in Cartagena, Colombia, in 1920, Enrique Grau has participated in many exhibitions outside his country in places such as Mexico City, São Paulo and New York. As a young artist, Grau traveled to New York where he studied at the Art Students League and throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, his work was shown extensively internationally; he officially represented Colombia in the Venice Biennial in 1958 and the São Paulo Biennial in 1959. Marta Traba singled out his singular talents and acclaimed his pictorial language.