Azull Martínez is a Colombian painter from Lorica, Córdoba, based in Cartagena de Indias and Barranquilla, whose work constructs a singular visual language around a single, powerful contrast: human figures rendered in black and white against strong, carefully planned color backgrounds; an opposition where lies her poetics.

Azull Martínez was born among the reflections of the Sinú River in Lorica, a municipality of Córdoba known for its colonial tile houses and an architecture that preserves the whispers of another era. Her grandfather frequented meetings in colonial houses with men of the local elite, and from the age of nine, Azull accompanied him to those gatherings, learning to see the world from within spaces saturated with history and conversation. When she discovered albums of black-and-white family photographs in her grandparents’ house, something revealed itself: the feeling of longing for something that had already passed. She integrated photography into her earliest works, and her grandfather emerged as their central figure, giving rise to the aesthetic that defines her entire practice: grayscale figures immersed in environments of color.

The visual language of Azull Martínez is grounded in a formal decision that is simultaneously a theoretical statement: human figures always appear in black and white while the space surrounding them burns with vibrant, carefully planned colors.  The colors are not arbitrary: each one carries the specific function of evoking an emotion, a moment, a temperature in time.