A number of Venezuelan visual artists are interviewed at the Grupo Realista event. Pedro León Castro and César Rengifo, who spoke on behalf of the Grupo for this article, explain that the group’s rationale is based on the need to work together to promote and disseminate Realist art in Venezuela. Inspired by what they describe as national and human concerns, they reject the “cosmopolitan” tendency and instead seek to address their own geographical and social realities, and hope to make the country understand what they are proposing. They suggest developing a form of art that embraces and reflects Venezuelan form and content through a program of exhibitions, publications, conferences, and documentaries about past and present Realist artists.

This article is important because it documents one of the first group attempts to coordinate the efforts of Venezuelan Realist art promoters, an idea that came to fruition some years later, in 1959, with the founding of the Taller de Arte Realista. The debate about the role of art as either a force for social change or a stimulant for the development of a “social conscience” began in 1945 and raged on, in varying degrees of intensity, for many years. The members of the Grupo Realista were: Dimas Parra, Eduardo Francis, César Rengifo (1915–80), Pedro León Castro (1913–2003), Rafael Rosales, Julio César Lovaina, Albano Méndez Osuna, Eulalio Tovar, Miguel Bouquet, Francisco D’Antonio, M. Funes, Manuel Vicente Gómez, and Castor Vázquez. Though the group itself did not have a major impact on Venezuelan cultural life, some of its members became noted exponents of Realist art. Rengifo became a leader of the social realism movement in 1948 when he published his essay “Tesis del Realismo. El arte y nuestro tiempo”.