Obregón was born in Barcelona, Spain. He was the son of a Colombian father and a Catalan mother. The Obregón family owned a textile factory in Barranquilla, Colombia. Most of his childhood was spent in Barranquilla and Liverpool, England. After returning to Barranquilla, he decided to become an artist. He studied fine arts in Boston for a year in 1939, then returned to Barcelona to serve as Vice-consul of Colombia for four years. He married Ilva Rasch-Isla, the daughter of poet Miguel Rasch-Isla, during his time in Spain.[1] In 1948, he became Director of the School of Fine Arts in Santafé de Bogotá, where he was influenced by the fresco style of artists Pedro Nel Gómez and Santiago Martinez Delgado. He left the School of Fine Arts and moved to France with his second wife, Sonia Osorio; he later married his third wife, English painter Freda Sargent. After traveling around Europe, he returned to Barranquilla in 1955. Obregón died on April 11, 1992, succumbing to a brain tumor. He lived and worked in Cartagena for the last 22 years of his life, from 1970 until his death in 1992.
Obregón was primarily a painter. His compositions are usually divided horizontally into two areas; style was characterized by use of color and impasto. Landscapes were translated into geometric symbols of Colombia. Obregón is an example of the abstract Surrealist trend in Latin America.
Critic Marta Traba identified a series of characteristic elements in Obregon’s work: personal poetic values; self-sufficiency in regard to freedom of form; search for identity based on the landscape, zoology, and flora; elliptic space people by magic elements; and contempt for urban culture. Obrégon made extensive use of his personal imagination and vitality.
