During his final years of study in the Fine Arts program at the National University, Saturnino Ramírez (1946-2002) found what would be the central theme of his artistic production: characters, scenarios and dynamics of urban reality from the early seventies. However, unlike his contemporaries, his work did not focus on portraying the aesthetics of the growing city nor on representing the marginalized of said transformation, but rather chose to capture the reality of places like pool halls, bars, brothels and other environments of city nightlife that had thus far been on the margins of plastic representation in the mid-twentieth century. This thematic shift, not without criticism, made his work an atypical proposal in the general panorama of national arts, which led him to scenarios like the III Coltejer Art Biennial (1972), the II American Biennial of Graphic Arts (1973) and multiple versions of the National Artists Salon, in addition to earning him a scholarship that allowed him to settle in Paris alongside figures like Luis Caballero, Darío Morales, Maripaz Jaramillo and Emma Reyes. He remained there 15 years, giving international circulation to his work. Prostitute Lighting a Cigarette (1980) presents a pop-oriented color scheme that, hybridized with an almost cinematic composition, distances the character from visual stereotypes surrounding sex work, linking her in turn to a universe in which clandestinity, loneliness, waiting and melancholy seem to be one thing.
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