Lucy Tejada Saenz was born in Pereira, Colombia on October 9, 1920 and died in Cali, Colombia on November 2, 2011. She came from a family of artists. She lived in Cali from 1936. After the death of her mother, Lucy moved to Bogota to study at the Javeriana University, and graduated from the School of Fine arts. There she met the also painter Antonio Valencia, that later would be her husband. She completed her training in the Saint Academy Fernando and the School of Graphic Arts of Madrid, Spain. After a trip to the Guajira, in the year 1947, she had her first exhibition. In the 1950s, she traveled for five years in Europe staying in Madrid, Paris and Bucharest, where she discovered the big museums.
Work
She has works in the Club Rialto of Pereira, the solon museum of Cali and in the Library Luís Ángel Arango, of Bogota. Her characters, imaginary beings of black and deep eyes live in her paintings, that resemble his world; a beautiful ideal world, inhabited only by women and boys. The artistic legacy is a trip by a world knitted of dreams, evocations and original proposals. Lucy Tejada exhibited her works in America and Europe, receiving several prizes by his work in different national contests without scholarships neither support of the state, always lived off the sale of her works and felt proud of this, is the future of all the artists of this country. Lucy Tejada, in company of her family and of near friends, constituted the Lucy Tejada Foundation, with the aim to conserve and spread her work and the one of Hernando, her brother, memories of Cali that creates and builds possible worlds each day. From the decade of the 1950s, her work had big international presence, when she participated of biennial in Venecia, São Paulo, Mexico, Córdoba-Argentina, Medellín, San Juan-Puerto Rico and The Habana-Cuba. After Tejada's death, and fulfilling her will, the family delivered to the city of Pereira a very valuable collection of 163 pieces of her work. The works of curation, study and preservation of such collection in preparation to a permanent public exhibition in a future. After two weeks in the unit of intensive cares of the clinic of Occident of Cali, Lucy Tejada died on November 2, 2011. She was survived by her children Claudia and the also artist Alejandro Valencia Tejada.
Awards
Alejandro Obregón called her "painter of the tenderness". Lucy Tejada exposed many times his works in America and Europe, received several prizes, among others the Medal of the Cultural Merit in recognition to his contributions to the Colombian art during more than 50 years, and always lived of the sale of his works.
National prize of Painting
Prize of Acquisition
First place of the Tenth Festival of Art
In the year 2008, the Ministry of culture of Colombia conceded him the Prize Life and Work, by his contributions and his long path in the painting.
Tribute
On 9 October 2018, to commemorate what would have been her 98th birthday, Google released a Google Doodle celebrating her.
