Bernardo Ríos

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Bernardo Ríos is a Colombian artist. He was born in Santuario, Risaralda, Colombia in 1959. Ríos is a self-taught artist coming from a very rural area of Colombia to present his artwork both nationally and internationally. Ríos' work first came to international attention after his one-man exhibition at the Colombian House of Congress in 2001.^{[citation needed]} His works can be found in galleries around the world.^{[citation needed]}

Country Life (80cm x 120cm) (2003)

His artwork takes in the most ordinary of themes — often just simple everyday themes distilled from Colombian life — capturing the most precious moments of life in rural Colombia.

His artistic style is based on what he calls "foquism" which may be considered as an extension in terms of style of art presented by the cubism of Picasso or the works created by George Braque, Franz Marc, or Lyonel Feininger or even the futurist art movement. However, Ríos maintains that his work is free from these influences and is simply based on the distortions that can be created by light through its reflection or refraction and it is this essence that most defines his work and artistic style. In addition, he includes small "symbols" in his canvases which also represent sounds - perhaps^{[citation needed]} the first artist to represent a real third dimension within a 2-D world.

Ríos works use glaze and scumble which are presented to create the geometric effects found within the images of his works. Occasionally he also includes the use of a palette knife to provide certain effects within his paintings.