Isabel Bolivar was born on July 28, 1979 in La Candelaria, a popular neighborhood of the city of Bogota, Colombia. 

 

Simon Bolivar (1783 -1830) led the war of independence against the Spanish Crown of the current Republics of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, which dreamt as a single and great united nation called "The Great Colombia".

 

Bogota is located in the center of the country in the area known as “Savannah of Bogota” which in turn, is part of the plateau Cundiboyacense, located on the Estern Cordillera, branch of the Andean Mountains. Its population is 7,295,387 inhabitants, while its metropolitan area counts 7,881,156 peolpe.

 

From 10,500 BC, humans groups inhabited the area with hunting and gathering activities. 

 

In 1538, after arriving with more than 500 men in his expedition from Santa Marta and finishing with only 70, the conqueror Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada, after having defeated the Muiscas and conquered the “Savannah of Bogota”, induced consequences for indigenous populations, leading to the death of millions of people (wars, slavery and above all diseases) as well as the disappearance of their cultures.

 

Ill-treatment of indigenous people that after being subjected to slavery by the conquerors, were forced to evangelize produced numerous revolts that prevented the pacification of the territory. The repartimiento*, the encomienda* and the mining and urban mita* were the institutions that forced the indigenous to pay taxes and forced labor. At the same time, the African slave trade was introduced by the port of Cartagena de Indias at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century.

 

The anxieties of independence of the population, added to the diminished economic and military situation of Spain, favored the triumph of the Liberation Campaign led by Simon Bolivar, who proclaimed the definitive independence in 1819.

 

The gypsy painter Juan Zíngaro, in one of his many trips to Latin America, showed the delicate problem of Colombia. The artist was directly confronted with the harsh reality of a people, through the history of a woman of the district of the Candelaria, one of the popular districts of Bogota. This woman, who with the same surname of the liberator, Simon Bolivar, faces bulls imported from Spain and raised in Colombia, living symbols of the conquest and black phantoms of the Inquisition, trying to give back to her vanquished people, betting with his life, the pride of being born in America.

 

The pictures representing Isabel Bolivar allowed the artist to overcome an important stage. It is through the history of Isabel Bolivar and under the influence of Tony Shafrazi who begins to use his gypsy name Juan Zíngaro.

 

Each of the paintings carries the signatures Jean Michel Mouiren/Juan Zíngaro upside down and the name of the painting. In them, Juan Zíngaro wanted to use some funds that he had never used before. He tried to tell the story of that female torera (bullfighter) from Bogota, Colombia, as if it were a story board. Each picture leads to the other and some of them carry a text that is not completely legible and says:

 

Simon Bolivar (1783 -1830) led the war of independence against the Spanish Crown of the current Republics of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, which dreamt as a single and great united nation called "The Great Colombia"

 

 

*El repartimiento de indios was a system of forced labor imposed by the Spanish in various parts of America, from the late sixteenth century to the early nineteenth century.

 

*La encomienda was a socioeconomic institution through which a group of individuals had to give back to another in work, species or otherwise, to enjoy a good or a benefit that they had received.

 

*La mita was a compulsory labor system used in the Americas specifically in the Andean Region, both in the Inca period and in the later Spanish conquest of America.