By Juan Pablo Plata
Juan Manuel, good afternoon.
Hello Juan Pablo, how are you?
Thank you very much for your time, it is a pleasure to have you. I want to start by asking you how it went at the Art Palm Beach 2026 fair where I saw you at the Verse Gallery booth.
Good, Juan Pablo, it was a pretty good experience where I was able to show the work, a part of the last work that I am doing with Verse Gallery that has behaved very well with me! And we have done some interesting things and this experience of being at this fair, it takes me to other levels.
You had already participated in something similar in other locations here in the United States, in Europe, and how was the reception of the public and sales? People usually don't talk about sales, and I apologize for the question, but is it something important in the art world?
It is the first time that I was at a fair like this. I am always at collective or individual exhibitions in Paris, in Europe, in the United States, in Colombia several times. Well, I have been exhibiting the work for 40 years, already working professionally, and this was a great experience. It was the first time and I plan to continue attending and taking the work to different international fairs.
And how was it for you the question of sales?
Well, the sales were, a sale was made there, of one of my artworks and follow-up is being made right now, to sell others. As I told you, it was the first time, but I see that people have great purchase capacity, especially in Palm Beach. So it is a very well placed sale, above all, it is very well posted because they are very good collectors, and it leads one to sell the work at good prices.
Very well, Juan Manuel, let's go back in time, what academic training do you have and how did you discover that you wanted to dedicate yourself to art?
Juan, I have been painting since I was 14 years old, I always wanted to be a painter. I went to several schools. I started doing my first trials and then I went to study painting and drawing with some teachers at the age of 17, 16 years old. Those courses that make one of theory, color, white and black, the grays, in short, but I always wanted it. Then I started because you know the story that the artist is not going to live from that, because selling the work is very difficult, so you have to study something else, different, in short, all the ways they said it. And I did a year of architecture, which helped me, and nowadays you can see it in the work, but it was just a year, and there I was definitely convinced that what I wanted to do was be a painter, an artist. So I traveled to Michigan, to Western Michigan University, where I did a four-year school, and there I worked with several very good teachers. And I returned to Colombia and continued with the research, painting, and all that, I traveled to Prague, Czechoslovakia, where I spent two years, a year and a half residing there, learning the history of art, learning all that classic part of painting and culture. In short, everything that one can live, being and living in these special cities. Then I went to Bellas Artes de Roma, where I spent two years working on painting and art history, where I did the workshops, two years there, Via di Rippeta, in the School of Fine Arts of Rome. And I returned to Colombia and continued with the research, working during these times, these years, I exhibited in Rome, I exhibited in Vienna, I did some things in Prague. And after Rome, I traveled to Colombia, where I did several exhibitions, I already started to make more name, to make myself known. And the last course I did in the Toronto School of Art, where I did some painting workshops, that was a year, and now what is the academic part. The rest is already experience, individual training, travel, and carrying the work to different cities around the world.
I just want to reiterate something so that we can address it, and it is if you had an epiphany that you had manual skills, the skills, someone told you in the family, in school, those in the neighborhood, hey, you are good at graphic things, how was that discovery that you had the art gift?
In reality, I always drew, my notebooks were full of drawings from school, and I always did something graphic, something geometric, and I always did it, and now it comes in the blood, my mother was painter, she was a painter all her life, then something is inherited.
What was her name?
Olga Pardo.
Your current paintings obey to those geometries, to some very beautiful tones, let's say, you have achieved as a conception that already goes through decades and is identified, one already knows what a Gaitan painting is, but how did you achieve this definition of your style, your own language, and what did you do before it was differentiated? I don't know if you tried the figurative, the sculpture, if you have done other things, why is style, let's say, so consolidated? I congratulate you.
Thank you, Juan, thank you, look, for 20 years I worked from pre-Columbian graphics, all the pre-Columbian part of our different ancestral families, all the rock art, I started to work and all the legacy that they left us, I started to deconstruct all this geometry, and it led me to clean all that ancestral part, all that pre-Columbian part of my work. I started to deconstruct it, I started to work from a discourse that Jacques Derrida teaches us, who is the modern French philosopher, who teaches us the discourse of deconstruction, so what I do, what I am doing, and that's why I got to my own language, where the chromatic is also own, because I work a diagonal chromatic, not circular, but diagonal before the palette, so that gives me, it identifies me, the say, ah, this is a Gaitan, for certain reasons, I don't use red, I don't use black, I have a very polished palette and I have been working towards the same discourse of deconstruction that Derrida teaches us.
As is usual in our interviews, we move on after talking about your creations, from the creator interviewed to the consumption that you make of other cultural objects, of other creators, what are you reading or what do you constantly read in the course of your life, what have you repeated from readings, and what do you read now these days? What do you listen?
Lately I've been listening and watching a lot of podcast and art things, art history, referring to the Impressionists, referring to all the isms that existed in the early 1900s, the late 1800s, I'm very dedicated to those readings and also to investigate more towards the trade in which I am working, which is to develop a trade from following a discipline and a consistency of work, and see how the great masters worked, today I listen to podcast, a program about Bernini, the great Italian master of the Baroque, who teaches us how sculpture begins to acquire a movement, how that marble begins to express that sense and that movement of human anatomy, so I investigate, I read and I like that a lot, I keep reading about Kandinsky, I like Paul Klee a lot, great painters of the Bauhaus, I like to read about the Bauhaus too.
And now regarding music, what has accompanied you during your life or what do you listen a lot now and if you paint with music?
Since I wake up, I get up very early every day to work, from 3 in the morning, I have that discipline and I get up at 3 to work and I put jazz, soft music, there is jazz, there is Brian Klee, for example. I leave you a message that I am very grateful to you in this medium for being able to express what I am working on and what I am doing and I hope to be able to see you very soon there in Florida with my work and in some great exhibitions!
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