The journalist Emilio Santana interviews Ángel Luque (1927?2014). The latter, a Spanish artist who lives in Venezuela, describes Informalism as an avant-garde form of expression, stressing its relationship to the concept of “chaos.” He discusses a number of fundamental concepts associated with the Informalist movement, explaining that it is, in a sense, descended from Cubism. Luque talks about his close involvement with Luisa Palacios’ studio and his interest in printmaking as means of visual expression.

The journalist Emilio Santana interviews the Spanish artist Ángel Luque (1927?2014)—who lived in Venezuela from 1955 to 1967—after he was awarded the National Prize for Drawing and Printmaking in 1962. Unlike other artists who have been classified as “Informalists,” Luque feels completely at home in the “Informalist movement” and freely admits it in this interview. In his opinion, Informalism’s guiding trait is pure expression, unencumbered by aesthetic ideas and formal statements. Luque defends the movement against charges that it is “pessimistic.” At the time of the interview, Luque was no longer an unknown foreign painter in Venezuela; after winning the Prize and associating with artists such as Luisa Palacios and Humberto Jaimes Sánchez, he had become one of the best known members of the Venezuelan Informalist movement, which was starting to gain legitimacy as an accepted form of visual art. He spends most of the interview talking about his friendship with Palacios, and expresses his appreciation for the opportunity to start working as a printmaker at her studio. Thanks to her encouragement, he managed to excel at a “very complicated” form of visual art; so much so that he was awarded the Prize. Compared to his earlier articles (Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, 1960), Luque is less “violent” in this interview. Despite the fact that, as an established artist he no longer has anything to prove, he still refers to his work as “revolutionary,” and is still seeking “freedom” and “risk” even as he acknowledges that his early experimental stage is behind him.

To read another critical article about this artist, see by Roberto Guevara “Ángel Luque y la violencia contenida” [doc. no. 1163733]. Also available is the article by Luque himself that appeared in the catalogue for Pinturas. Luque, the exhibition presented at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas in 1965, “[Deseo que estas obras confirmen que vivo de pie...]” [doc. no. 1156720], and his critique of the rational excesses of the twentieth century and the capitalist system, “De una encuesta sobre ciencia y arte” [doc. no. 1168024].