Untitled (Drawing Off the Wall) is an early painting by one of the most recognized, young Colombian painters working today, Oscar Murillo. The painting shows Murillo’s signature mark-making style and energetic graffiti-like gestures that dominate the canvas. Using oil stick and spray paint, Murillo creates a composition characterized by abstraction, and a slight figuration, as one can recognize a sphere on the middle top part of the painting. On the bottom part of the work, the artist used two Spanish words: pasteles and arroz (rice). In Colombia, pasteles are a local food similar to Mexican empanadas, but their ingredients vary depending on the region in which they are made. Murillo was born in the small town of La Paila, located near the city of Cali, known for its rice fields and pasteles made with rice. In Untitled (Drawing Off the Wall), Murillo also asserts his cultural heritage specific to an area of Colombia known for its Afro-Indian cultures, and in this case through food.
Identification
Title
Untitled (Drawing Off the Wall)
Production Date
2011
Object Number
2017.257
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of anonymous donor
Untitled (Drawing Off the Wall) by Oscar Murillo is an oil stick and spray can painting on canvas made in 2011. It measures roughly six and a half feet wide by five and a half feet tall. It is hung in portrait orientation, meaning its shortest side runs parallel to the ground.
The painting depicts various shapes and gestures with words in bright colors.
The background of the painting is white but has many faint scribbles of different colors similar to a dirty wall or a child’s drawing. The scribbles become very dense towards the middle of the composition. At the top-middle there is a distinct circular shape that is dark red and blue. Faint words are visible behind and over the circular shape, but are difficult to read. Directly underneath the circle there are long streaks of black color that extends toward the right extreme of the canvas. Underneath the black streaks, there are also some bright yellow and blue pigments. Further down, among more scribbles of various colors, the word Pasteles takes up the lower half of the canvas, in a bright orange color. Directly underneath we can see the word Arrz in neon yellow and black scribbled along the bottom edge of the canvas.
Oscar Murillo
Oscar Murillo — b. 1986, La Paila, Colombia; lives in London Artist Page
Artworks Related to African and African Diaspora and Latin American and Latinx