Promises and Paradoxes: The French Academic Model and Complementarity in Artistic Training at the School of Fine Arts in Colombia, 1886-1905

This article analyzes the impact that the French academic model had on the development of Colombia’s School of Fine Arts. To this end, attention will be paid to the role of foreign artists who were invited to the country and of fellows sponsored by the School and the State who supplemented their studies in European, above all French academies. It is postulated that the French academic model was adopted in the School with the purpose of improving artistic knowledge for a community that lacked spaces for continuous training throughout the 19th century, giving way to a series of successes and contradictions which allow us to track the path of an institution that lacked the economic and material resources required to properly apply the model that guided its practice.