Amor Eterno is the second American exhibition of Gonzalo Díaz Ladino, Colombia’s most predominant street and graphic artist. He described his collection as a “gallery of beautiful, erotic paintings.” The historic porn theater Esmeralda Pussycat in Bogota, Colombia, commissioned them in 1985. These vibrant airbrushed paintings, displayed in the theater’s lobby, lured Bogota’s pedestrians off the streets for decades.

Gonzalo is known throughout South America for his spectacular movie billboards, which he began creating as a young man in the 1950s. He is considered a cultural icon throughout South America and has influenced and trained generations of young artists for over five decades in commercial painting. In 2009, he had a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art of Bogota, MamBo.

Amor Eterno (Eternal Love) depicts scenes referenced from pornographic films that premiered in the old theater. Gonzalo’s artistic sensibility has created an erotic fantasy world that is purely female. Each woman is a powerful presence imbued with vibrant sexuality. His use of color, smooth surfaces, and highly contrasted lighting seduce the viewer into a world of glamor, pleasure, and surprising tenderness. It is a glimpse into Bogota’s cultural underworld, which despite this staunchly catholic country, thrived in the heart of its city. Gonzalo’s images tempt us back into this past to reveal another movie world, more hidden, less respected, but no less glamorous in its own right.