The collection of Colombian painting prints in diskettes, started around 1992 as a personal midnight hobby and ICT interest. In 1998 www.colarte.arts.co was born as a project dedicated to show exclusively Colombian painting and sculpture. Living artists had to pay a small amount to subscribe. Personally I was quite displeased with the results: ancient art, non reachable artists and those not interested were absent from the project. Thus, I decided to switch to a non profit and no income project so as to be free to include a more balanced sample of Colombian plastic arts. Documental search lead to other arts: photography, fashion, prehispanic art , TV, cinema, theater, music.... Visits to new and second hand book stores, libraries, museums, show rooms and artist workshops showed that Colombian art information is quite restricted to the public. Not because it does not exist: Books and booklets are released in small amounts but they are expensive and only reach a restricted number of bookstores and private collections. Magazines and newspapers appear today and disappear tomorrow. Many originals remain out of reach for the artist, museums, and showroom shelves. ColArte’s goal was to collect both easy and difficult to find art, as well as perishable Colombian art information, and to guide people to data sources like museums, show rooms, bookstores, editors, Internet links, and of course www.colarte.arts.co .

In 2007 - Thanks to the new facilities to transmit compressed queries ColArte is including  large sample images in artist's text summaries with links to other webs containing  great amount of the same artist's photographs.  This allows visitors to have a guide to other information sources.

In 2008, God willing,  ColArte will implement its contents with videos and art performances.  My task for next year includes technical updates and subdivision of sections that have become too large.  It will also start to promote commercial adds to finance expansion and future stability, but always keeping a non profit status. 

In 2009 ColArte plans to transform its graphic presentation and expedite performance in accordance with announced new technology.

By 2010 it is expected to be a well established and recognized non profit organization. A model to be followed by other Colombian and international projects.

Being able to transmit Colombian art and beauty all over the world.

Being able to include broad Colombian art aspects.  Well known artists as well as merging youngones.  Ancient art as well as contemporary.

Establishing a specialized searching engine to locate Colombian aspects not covered in other  commonly used websites.

Establishing links to other web sites related to Colombia.

Being able to include texts, pictures and sound to illustrate.

ColArte’s scheme is quite interesting: It is a mixed between a public ciberlibrary and a private trade. There are no complete books or publications scanned, only part of them. When the book or publication is not commercially available I try to include all pictures and text related to art. When it is available on other reliable webs I establish links and include only a restricted sample in ColArte pages.

Similar projects to ColArte's do not demand a large budget, they can be started by individuals and then permit their development. It is worth while emphasizing that Projects like ColArte in other areas are a real need in countries like Colombia. Highly developed countries and main Internet companies are undertaking huge programs to establish ciberlibraries with millions of E-books and very well organized searching facilities. However, they are for the time being concentrated in English, German, French, in the interests of important countries. It will take years before they notice the interests of specific medium and small size countries. Projects like ColArte will serve as support for large E-libraries that will appear in the future.

Projects like ColArte can be developed  by individuals, groups, government agencies and commercial enterprises as well.