City, art, and music in the work of the Colombian writer
Photo: Personal archive
Germán Peñuela Rodríguez is one of those authors who resists being confined to a single literary tradition. A writer, teacher, researcher, and passionate advocate of the arts, he has built a body of work in which the contemporary city, music, cinema, painting, philosophy, and Colombian cultural memory converge. From Bogotá — a city historically tied to the country’s cultural identity — Peñuela has developed a narrative approach that blends urban storytelling, historical evocation, poetry, and existential reflection.
Born in Tunja, his literature is deeply influenced by his background in Social Sciences and Philosophy, disciplines that have enabled him to construct a critical perspective on human reality, social tensions, and the emotional fragility of the modern individual. Added to this is his training in film production, evident in a style rich in imagery, atmosphere, and narrative sequences closely aligned with the language of cinema. In the cultural sphere, he also maintains a close connection with the department of Boyacá as a member of the Association of Writers of Boyacá (AESBO), through which he actively participates in poetry readings, literary gatherings, and a variety of initiatives promoting and disseminating regional literary creation.
Yet beyond his academic background, there is one trait that especially defines both Peñuela’s personality and his work: his immense cultural curiosity. Speaking with him is like entering a space where cinema, music, philosophy, painting, and literature coexist naturally and effortlessly. Within minutes, he may move from discussing a classic film to recalling a jazz album, commenting on the ideas of Plato, or reflecting on the aesthetic power of the frescoes of Michelangelo. This ability to connect seemingly distant worlds is not merely an accumulation of references; it is an organic part of the way he understands art and the defining mark that runs throughout his literary work.
Germán Peñuela belongs to that rare generation of writers for whom art is not simply an intellectual subject, but a way of inhabiting the world. His perspective is global, deeply humanistic, and at the same time attentive to the everyday concerns of ordinary citizens. This combination is ultimately reflected in his books, where the streets of Bogotá coexist with the European Renaissance, Indigenous oral tradition, and the counterculture of the 1960s.
A World Shaped by Cinema, Music, and Painting
Photo: Personal archive
Germán Peñuela’s artistic passion extends far beyond writing. The author owns a collection of more than two thousand films, including the classic by French director Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon, as well as a music archive of over ten thousand CDs and LPs. Within this vast sonic universe coexist jazz, blues, rock, salsa, classical music, and protest songs—genres that later filter into his narratives and shape much of the cultural atmosphere of his work.
His travels across Europe have also profoundly influenced his aesthetic sensibility. During these journeys, he has visited museums, galleries, and cities where he has been able to engage directly with the works of great masters of painting. It is therefore not surprising to find recurring references in his books to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Edvard Munch, and Andrei Rublev.
Perhaps one of the most distinctive aspects of his career, however, is his interest in Colombia’s Indigenous cultures. Peñuela learned the Sikuani language and worked with the oral traditions of communities in Vichada and Meta in northeastern Colombia. This engagement is reflected in bilingual stories and fragments in which he recovers myths, ancestral narratives, and cultural expressions that are rarely present in contemporary urban literature.
At a time when many Indigenous languages face the threat of extinction, this work acquires significant cultural value.
Bogourbanikón: Bogotá Transformed into Fiction
Photo: Personal archive
Among his most notable publications is Bogourbanikón – Relatos de la ciudad (2023), arguably the work that best encapsulates his literary universe.
In this book, Bogotá ceases to be merely a city and becomes “Bogourbanikón,” a kind of immense urban organism where routine, marginality, desire, violence, and despair coexist. The city is portrayed as an exhausting space, yet also a profoundly human one.
Peñuela describes avenues, transport stations, buildings, and working-class neighbourhoods, but not through traditional costumbrista approaches. What truly interests him is how the city emotionally affects those who inhabit it.
His stories feature citizens worn down by noise and concrete, characters trapped in daily monotony, and individuals who survive amid indifference and modern chaos. Yet moments of beauty, eroticism, imagination, and art also emerge.
The Bogotá of Bogourbanikón is harsh, contradictory, and deeply Latin American.
“The Red Worm” and the Poetics of TransMilenio
Photo: Personal archive
One of the most representative stories in the book is Dianne 2. In it, a character travels on the “red worm,” a clear metaphor for Bogotá’s public transport system known as TransMilenio, while observing the city through the window.
Exhausted by routine, the protagonist falls asleep and enters a dream filled with sensuality and artistic references. There he encounters Dianne, a painter inspired by Renaissance aesthetics, with whom he experiences an erotic and pictorial encounter woven from oil paint, colours, and nude bodies.
When he wakes up, he returns once again to the noise of the city, collective fatigue, and the daily routine of public transport.
This contrast encapsulates Peñuela’s literary work: on one hand, the harshness of urban reality; on the other, imagination as an emotional refuge.
Literature and Historical Memory
Photo: Personal archive
Another of the book’s most striking stories is Preludio (Prelude), a short text that evokes the lead-up to the takeover of the Palace of Justice, which took place in the Colombian capital in the mid-1980s.
The narrative begins with a man waking abruptly to a telephone call. Gradually, the reader realizes that something dark and momentous is about to happen. The story conveys political tension and drama without reconstructing the events in a documentary or historical manner.
Here, another of the writer’s recurring concerns becomes evident: Colombian memory and the events that have left a lasting mark on the country.
Armonías: Music Turned into Literature
Photo: Personal archive
If Bogourbanikón – Relatos de la ciudad represents the exploration of the city and its contradictions, Armonías – Antología de relatos musicales (2026), his most recent book, perhaps reveals the most intimate and passionate side of Germán Peñuela Rodríguez.
The work proposes a literary journey through different eras, genres, and musical universes in which music ceases to be mere accompaniment and becomes the absolute protagonist of the stories. Its pages feature jazz, blues, rock, salsa, Cuban son, carranga, cante jondo, and classical music as expressions deeply connected to the human experience.
The book brings together stories inspired by figures such as Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Édith Piaf, Rubén Blades, Jorge Velosa, and Ludwig van Beethoven, among many others.
However, Peñuela does not limit himself to recreating musical biographies. What he truly seeks is to explore how music emotionally transforms human beings and how certain sounds eventually become part of collective memory.
One of the book’s most striking stories is the one inspired by Hendrix, where the electric guitar appears as a symbol of rebellion and liberation. In another text, dedicated to Joan Baez and the spirit of Woodstock, music becomes an expression of political resistance and the search for freedom. There are also stories shaped by the Baroque solemnity of Antonio Vivaldi and by the emotional intensity of Beethoven.
The book also reflects the author’s profound musical knowledge, the result of decades spent as a collector, critic, and student of different musical traditions. This experience is evident in a prose rich in rhythm, cultural references, and aesthetic sensitivity.
In Armonías, music appears almost as a mystical experience capable of altering one’s perception of the world. Each story seems constructed like a musical composition: there are pauses, emotional crescendos, and moments of narrative explosion in which the words attempt to reproduce the impact of a melody.
More than a thematic anthology, the book functions as a reflection on art, sensitivity, and the human need to transcend through creation.
From the Renaissance to Rock
The thematic breadth of Germán Peñuela Rodríguez’s work is particularly striking. In Madonna della Rovere – Relatos del Renacimiento y Barroco (2024), the author travels to 15th- and 16th-century Europe to recreate the intellectual and artistic atmosphere of the Renaissance. Painters, philosophers, adventurers, and scientists appear in a time when reason was beginning to challenge religious authority.
One of the most notable stories is Tiziano, inspired by Italian Renaissance painting and the monumental artistic tradition of Michelangelo. Here, the author blends Greek mythology, sensuality, and historical decay with a deeply visual prose style.
Peñuela’s literature thus demonstrates a rare ability to move across eras and settings without losing aesthetic coherence.
A Visual and Deeply Human Literature
Photo: Personal archive
The writing of Germán Peñuela Rodríguez deliberately avoids minimalism. His texts are filled with imagery, historical references, metaphors, and cultural connections. Within his pages, Greek mythology, European cinema, psychedelic rock, Indigenous oral tradition, and everyday life in Bogotá coexist. This blend turns his work into a visual and sensory literary experience.
Yet behind all these references lies a constant concern: the human condition. His characters often confront loneliness, fear, desire, frustration, or a loss of meaning in an increasingly fast-paced and dehumanized world.
Thus, beyond the city, music, or painting, Peñuela’s literature ultimately speaks of something far more universal: the need to find beauty and meaning amid contemporary chaos.
In times dominated by digital immediacy and fast content consumption, his work becomes an invitation to slow down, observe, and think. It is a form of literature that demands time, sensitivity, and a willingness to navigate different cultural and emotional landscapes.
From Tunja to Bogotá, from the Sikuani language to the Italian Renaissance, Germán Peñuela Rodríguez has built a distinctive literary voice: intense, artistic, and profoundly human.
Añay, añay lerá jamatsu (Thank you for reading the article, in Sikuani language)
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