The Solón Foundation reopens its galleries on the 4th August 8 with a retrospective exhibition featuring the works of Walter Solón Romero on the theme of human rights.

Walter Solón Romero was a renowned Bolivian muralist, whose artistic work was never produced for art’s own sake, but to recover, rebuild and transform reality. Consequently in his work there are few paintings that are decorative, but many that denounce hunger, torture, injustice and impunity.

The focus of Solón’s work is fundamentally intertwined with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). This essence and message will be the theme of the exhibition, which will feature 60 works produced over half century including paintings, drawings, engravings, tapestries and murals.

The majority of the exhibition is focused on civil and human rights such as the right to health and education. A large number of the famous “Quijotes” series in pencil form part of this theme.

Also represented are works related to the right to eat – which Solón represented with the symbols of a fish’s skeleton and an empty plate – as well as works dedicated to the rights of the child, such as the painting carrying the title “No child should lose the right to become a man.”

In the exhibition, there will be a special place for works in “Amate,” a type of tree bark used in the Americas as paper before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores. In this material, there are works citing the right to resistance, such as “Bartolina Sisa” and the “Never-ending conquest”.

Outside the Foundation, a four-metre high sculpture of a man with wings will be inaugurated to represent the re-opening of the Foundation as a public museum.

The aim of the museum is to tell the stories of Bolivia’s social movements through the work of Solón. Over the next few months, this Museum will be gradually developed with exhibitions on four floors featuring some of more than 2000 works produced by Solón.

The first floor will tell the story of Bolivia’s social movements. The second will be grouped around the experiences of key groups such as miners, indigenous people, and women. On the third floor will be a focus on the life and work of Solón (his travels, anecdotes, press coverage). The basement will feature details of the artistic methods the artist used from his sculptures to painting.