Origin: Colombia
Based in: Colombia

At the age of 24, Mateo Gutierrez Zuluaga has become one of Colombia’s most innovative and eye-catching graphic designers and contemporary pop artist. He has truly mastered the art of using bold, powerful colours to captivate his audience and establish himself in the booming Colombian art scene.

From a young age, Mateo showed great prowess by honing-in on his drawing skills. At 10 years old, he won his first internationally recognized award for his use of bold and stimulating colours. After winning such a prestigious award he chose a university Fine Arts Degree that focused on graphic design, illustration and colour. Upon graduation, he studied and worked closely with his uncle, the great master of hyper-realism, Walter Zuluaga Restrepo, whom he studied for hours painting and creating new ideas and techniques. Mateo has become a master of creating powerful explosions of colour against the established norms. He uses familiar objects from popular culture and puts a sensational spin on comic book heroes or comic-inspired works, expressed in bold chromatic figurative art. He pushes the boundaries into a new paradigm of thought-provoking stimulation, where his iconic figures display stylistic characteristics that draw the viewer into a seductive world of urban glamour and spell-bounding exoticism.

As a free-thinker with profound imagination, he continues to push the boundaries with vivid, vibrant colours combined with endless energy. His desire to combine mundane subjects with a unique twist of Magic Realism that creates an outline of magical fusion which few artists have been able to capture, let alone master. His playful yet perplexing renditions of elements of comic-like fantasy have created a vast following and are widely admired. His geometric shapes and awe-inspiring, larger-than-life characters have created a mystique and allure celebrated throughout the art world.