JUAN ESTEBAN ARISTIZABAL VASQUEZ

• TOP 1:    JUAN ESTEBAN ARISTIZABAL VASQUEZ

He was born August 9, 1972, better known as Juanes (for the contraction of his first and second name), is a Colombian musician who was a member of the heavy metal band Ekhymosis and is now a solo artist. In 2000, his solo debut album Fíjate Bien won three Latin Grammy Awards. According to his record label, Juanes has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide.

His follow-up album, Un Dia Normal, was released in 2002 and was later certified platinum in multiple countries throughout Latin America. Juanes' third album, Mi Sangre, which becomes an international bestseller, managing to position well in a number of countries around the world, achieved success due to the single "La Camisa Negra". He has since released La Vida... Es Un Ratico (2007) and P.A.R.C.E. (2010). On May 29, 2012 Juanes released the album Juanes MTV Unplugged

JAIME GARZON

• TOP 2:    JAIME GARZON

Jaime Garzón was born in Bogotá on October 24, 1960. He studied law and political science at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, but his active involvement in politics and television did not allow him to finish.

He was a Colombian journalist, a comedian, lawyer, peace activist and political satirist. He was very popular on Colombian television during the 1990s, especially for his political satire. In addition to his work on television, he also had roles as a peace negotiator in the release of FARC guerrillas' hostages. He was murdered by suspected right-wing paramilitary forces in 1999, although the case remains opened and unsolved.

 

MANUEL ELKIN PATARROYO

• TOP 3:    MANUEL ELKIN PATARROYO

He was born March 11, 1946 is a Colombian pathologist who made the world's first attempt of synthetic vaccine for malaria, a disease transmitted by mosquitoes that affects millions of people in tropical and subtropical regions, including parts of the Americas, Asia, and Africa.

 The vaccine candidate, first developed in 1987, was evaluated in clinical trials carried out by the WHO in Gambia, Tanzania and Thailand, and had mixed results. In 2009, a comprehensive Cochrane review assessed the SPf66 as being not efficacious in Africa and Asia, and as having a low but statistically significant efficacy of 28% in South America. Today, after more than 33 years of research, the SPf66 malaria vaccine is not recommended for prophylaxis of malaria and is listed as "inactive" by the WHO.

MARTIN CHARLES SCORSESE

• TOP 4:    MARTIN CHARLES SCOTESESE

He was born November 17, 1942, is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest directors of all time. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation. He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won an Academy Award, a Palme d'Or, Cannes Film Festival Best Director Award, Silver Lion, Grammy Award, Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards.

Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption,[18] machismo, modern crime, and violence. Scorsese is hailed as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers of all time, directing landmark films such as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and Goodfellas (1990) – all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), having been nominated previously 5 times; he has subsequently been nominated once more, bringing his total number of nominations for Best Director.

SUSAN SONTAG

• TOP 5:    SUSAN SONTAG

She was born 16 January, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer and filmmaker, professor, literary icon, and political activist. Beginning with the publication of her 1964 essay "Notes on Camp'", Sontag became an international cultural and intellectual celebrity. Her best known works include On Photography, Against Interpretation, The Way We Live Now, Iliness as Metaphor, Regarding the Pain of Others, The Volcano Lover and In America.

Sontag was active in writing and speaking about, or travelling to, areas of conflict, including during the Vietnam War and the Siege of Sarajevo. She wrote extensively about photography, culture and media, AIDS and illness, human rights, and communism and leftist ideology. Her often provocative essays and speeches sometimes drew criticism. The New York Review of Books called her "one of the most influential critics of her generation."

FERNANDO BOTERO

• TOP 6:    FERNANDO BOTERO 

He was born April 19, 1932, is a Colombian figurative artist. His works feature a figurative style, called by some "Boterismo", which gives them an unmistakable identity. Botero depicts women, men, daily life, historical events and characters, milestones of art, still-life, animals and the natural world in general, with exaggerated and disproportionate volumetry, accompanied by fine details of scathing criticism, irony, humor, and ingenuity.

Self-titled "the most Colombian of Colombian artists" early on, he came to national prominence when he won the first prize at the Salón de Artistas Colombianos in 1958. Working most of the year in Paris, in the last three decades he has achieved international recognition for his paintings, drawings and sculpture, with exhibitions across the world. His art is collected by major museums, corporations and private collectors. 

 

GONZALO ARANGO

• TOP 7:    GONZALO ARANGO

 

Gonzalo Arango Arias born in Andes, Antioquia 1931 - Tocancipá, Cundinamarca 1976, was a Colombian poet, journalist and philosopher. During a repressive phase of government in the 1940s he led a literary movement known as Nadaismo (Nothing-ism) Other young Colombian thinkers of his generation in the movement inspired by the Colombian philosopher Fernando González Ochoa.

Arango's life includes contrasts from an open atheism to an intense spirituality, and a strong criticism of the society of his time. Those contrasts can be read in the First Manifesto of Nadaísmo as "The artist is considered sometimes a symbol fluctuation between holiness and madness".

In 1947 he began to study Law in the University of Antioquia, but three years later he left the studies to devote himself to writing, starting with his first work " After the Man ".

Arango died in a tragic car accident in the city of Tocancipá in 1976 when he was planning to move to London so that "by losing me, Colombians win me".

 

FANNY ELISA MIKEY

• TOP 8:    FANNY ELISA MIKEY 

She was born in 1930 – 16 August 2008 was an Argentine-born Colombian actress, theatre producer and entrepreneur. She lived and worked in Colombia from 1959 until her death and was the creator and organizer of the Bogotá Iberoamerican Theatre Festival, known as the biggest theatre festival in the world.

In 1976, she moved to Bogotá, when she created the Fundación Teatro Nacional (National Theatre Foundation), an organization to promote the arts in Colombia and that featured adaptations of famous plays (Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, The Vagina Monologues, and Closer) among others.

HERNESTO GUEVARA “CHE”

• TOP 9:    HERNESTO GUEVARA “CHE”

He was born June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967, commonly known as el Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia within popular culture.

As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed. His burgeoning desire to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the United States prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Arbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow at the behest of the United Fruit Company solidified Guevara's political ideology. Later, while living in Mexico City, he met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht, Granma, with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.

GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

• TOP 10:    MANUEL ELKIN PATARROYO

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez; He was born March 6, 1927 is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, and is the earliest remaining living recipient.1 He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in his leaving law school for a career in journalism. From early on, he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics. 

In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha; they have two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.

He started as a journalist, and has written many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as magic realism, which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo (the town mainly inspired by his birthplace Aracataca), and most of them express the theme of solitude.

 

SALMONE ROGELIO

• TOP 11:    SALMONE ROGELIO

You would the most famous architect, . He was born in Paris in 1929, in a      spanish and french home his father spanish and his mother French who traveled with him, still a child, to Bogota, where they settled.

Salmone the Colombian architect was considered the best in the history, and the most recognized in the Country he  died on October 3rd  in Bogota, when he was 78.

During his career, four times Zalmonah received the National Prize of Architecture in Colombia and in 2003 became the first Latin American to which was awarded the Alvar Aalto, considered one of the most important awards in the world in the discipline.

JOHN PAUL II

• TOP 12:    JOHN PAUL II

John Paul II , sometimes called Blessed John Paul or John Paul the Great, he was born 18 May 1920 – 2 April 2005), reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005. He was the second-longest serving Pope in history and the first non-Italian since 1523.

John Paul II was acclaimed as one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century. He is credited with helping to end Communist rule in his native Poland and eventually all of Europe. John Paul II significantly improved the Catholic Church's relations with Judaism, Islam, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion. Though criticised for upholding the Church's teachings against artificial contraception and the ordination of women, and for his support of the Church's Second Vatican Council and its reform, he was also praised for his firm, orthodox Catholic stances. He is also renowned for his implementation of several papal documents pertaining to the role of the Church in the modern world.

He was one of the most traveled world leaders in history, visiting 129 countries during his pontificate. As part of his special emphasis on the universal call to holiness, he beatified 1,340 people and canonised 483 saints, more than the combined tally of his predecessors during the preceding five centuries. A key goal of his papacy was to transform and reposition the Catholic Church. His wish was "to place his Church at the heart of a new religious alliance that would bring together Jews, Muslims and Christians in a great [religious] armada". On 19 December 2009, John Paul II was proclaimed venerable by his successor Pope Benedict XVI and was beatified on 1 May 2011 after the Congregation for the Causes of Saints attributed one miracle to him, the healing of a French nun from Parkinson's disease.

 

ALEJANDRO OBREGON

• TOP 13:    ALEJANDRO OBREGON

Daniel Alberto Alejandro María de la Santísima Trinidad Obregón Roses, commonly known as Alejandro Obregón, he was born 4 June 1920 – 11 April 1992 was a Colombian painter, muralist, sculptor and engraver.

Obregón was born in Barcelona, Spain, the son of a Colombian father and a Catalan mother. The Obregón family owned a fabrics factory in Barranquilla. Most of his childhood was spent in Barranquilla, Colombia and Liverpool, England. After returning to Barranquilla, he decided to become an artist. 

Obregón presented his first solo exhibition in Colombia in 1945. He participated in the fifth and sixth Salón de Artistas Colombianos in 1944 and 1945, which attracted attention from press and critics. In 1945, Obregón settled in Barranquilla where he won first prize for Dorso de mujer at the first Salón Anual de Artistas Costeños and showed his second solo exhibition in February 1946. In 1949, he moved to Paris and exhibited work throughout France, Germany and Switzerland. He then moved to Alba, near Avignon, where he remained until 1955. A painting from that year, Still Life in Yellow, shows that his personal style was fully developed, with the formal elements that came to characterize his work. In 1955, Souvenir of Venice (1954) was acquired for the Museum of Modern Art New York, making Obregón one of the few Colombians in the museum's collection. In 1962, he won the Salón de Artistas Colombianos Prize, establishing him as a major 20th century Colombian artist.

Obregón died on April 11, 1992, succumbing to a brain tumo.

RAFAEL POMBO

• TOP 14:    RAFAEL POMBO
 

"Rafael Pombo is one of the great poets of Colombia, and the best exponent of romanticism in the country".

was a Colombian poet born in Bogotá November 7, 1833 – May 5, 1912. Trained as a mathematician and an engineer in a military school, Rafael Pombo served in the army and he traveled to the United States of America as Secretary of the Legation in Washington. After the termination of this diplomatic position, he was hired by D. Appleton & Company in New York to translate into Spanish nursery rhymes from the Anglo-Saxon oral tradition. The product of this work, more than a translation, was a transformative adaptation published in two books under the titles Cuentos pintados para niños and Cuentos morales para niños formales. 

In spite of his extensive and diverse literary works, Rafael Pombo is mostly remembered for this contribution to children's literature. Among his most popular children's fables are Michín, Juan Chunguero, Pastorcita, La Pobre Viejecita, Simón el Bobito, El Gato Bandido, and El Renacuajo paseador.

After seventeen years in the United States of America, Rafael Pombo returned to Colombia, where he worked as a celebrated translator and journalist (founding several newspapers). On August 20, 1905 he was crowned as Colombia's best poet - his Poesías Completas was published in 1957, from which the poem En El Niága was taken. Rafael Pombo remained in Colombia until his death on May 5, 1912.

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