Miguel Ángel Cárdenas
(Espinal, Colombia, 1934)

Miguel-Ángel Cárdenas was born in Espinal, Colombia in 1934. Between 1953 and 1957 he studied architecture at the National University of Colombia in Bogota, Colombia, and visual art at the Escuela de Bellas Artes Bogota. In 1961 the Ministry of Culture of Colombia awarded him a scholarship to study at the Barcelona School of Graphic Arts.

In 1962 he moved to the Netherlands and has been living there ever since. Shortly after his arrival in the Netherlands, Cárdenas got a solo exhibition in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, and participated in the great exhibition «Pop Art and New Realism» (1964 -1965; The Hague, Brussels, Vienna, Berlin) that also featured works by Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg.

Cárdenas was one of the ten artists invited by then Crown Princess, HM Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands for a series of cultural soirees at the Drakesteijn Castle in 1969. His performance was called «Symphony for seven waiters», and it also included Prince Claus, Wim Beeren, Marinus Boezem, Ad Dekkers, Jan Dibbets and Peter Struycken.