Basel based Colombian artist & architect

Bio


Echeverri (b. 1997) grew up between Medellín, Colombia, and Boston, USA. He trained in fine arts at the Fundación Universitaria Bellas Artes in Medellín (2010–2014) before studying architecture at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (2015–2022), with an exchange semester at TU München and a formative internship in Basel along the way. Since 2022, he has lived and worked in Basel, where architectural thinking shapes the way he draws and paints.

Echeverri’s work moves through boundaries and the cracks between them — the narrow spaces where one can embrace mortality yet still live on one’s own terms. At its center, his work circles around the mutual relationship between the built environment and its inhabitants. Homes, commonly perceived as familiar sanctuaries of the self, become uncanny spaces, turning dwellers into hostages to domesticity. The same transformation runs inward: Bodies become structures that house themselves, metallic highlights catching light like skeletal scaffolding. Figures stand enfolded by skeletal others, bright against pitch-black fields, ringed by humid, sweaty foliage that echoes the Tropical Gothic of Echeverri’s native Colombia.

At heart a draftsman, Echeverri works across ink, acrylic, oil pastel, paint on plexiglass, and mask-making — each treated as a form of drawing, favoring line over brushstroke. Most distinctive are his reverse paintings on plexiglass: Working on the back of the sheet, he scrapes lines into each layer of acrylic before painting over them, so that when viewed from the front, the drawing emerges in the color of the layer beneath. The result holds the spontaneity of the brushstroke and the precision of the drawn line in a single gesture.

Education


2015–2022 Bachelor in Architecture, Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

2010–2014 Certificate of Excellence, Young Artists Program, Universidad de Bellas Artes.

Exhibitions


2022 Work exhibited in the group show “eh Lappe oder zweh” at B74 Raum für Kunst, Lucerne.

2022 Invited to the group exhibition “TMF” at Galerie Kunstbehandlung, Munich, Germany.

2021 Participated in the group exhibition ”La morfología de la arquitectura moderna” in Medellín.

2020 Featured on the renowned YouTube channel “Art Prof”.

2019 Solo exhibition held in the Arts Faculty at the UNAL in Medellín.

2019 Artworks exhibited at the Belén Public Library in Medellín.

2014 Participated in the group exhibition at the Fundación Universitaria Bellas Artes in Medellín.