1993– · @javiermoralescasas
Javier Morales Casas is a Colombian painter, born in Ibagué, Tolima, in 1993. He describes himself as a painter, researcher and recycler, and names his subject as everyday life beside the mountains in the countryside of northern and southern Tolima.
When he was born, his grandfather set out from Canaan, his farm, toward Ibagué to meet his newborn grandson and was shot by guerrillas as he left. The meeting never happened. He has written that the episode separated him from life in the countryside, and his family had to move to the city because of the violence. He has said that an artist who comes from the countryside can take the path of violence or the path of superstition, and that he took superstition. The paintings draw on the stories told by the women of his family, his grandmother, mother and aunts, of encounters with witches and with the devil.
Morales calls himself a primitivist and has said he began painting at eleven. He named his style Magical Primitivism (Primitivismo Mágico), a graft between Haitian Vodou painting and Colombian Primitivism. He paints on surfaces he finds in the street and says he is interested in the memories such objects hold. Mythical characters drawn from the fantastical stories of the Tolima mountains inhabit his work; one painting is titled Monstruos y apariciones del sur del Tolima (2024). He often paints himself as a creature between beast and human.
In 2024 he completed an artist residency at Casa Santa Ana. In recent years he has also worked in ceramics. For BOG25, the Bienal Internacional in Bogotá, he showed an installation of paintings and ceramic objects, listed as me perdí en el monte (2022–2025). In November and December 2025 SGR Galería in Bogotá presented Unfolded Beings, a selection of the mythical characters in his work.
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