Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this [1986] article, Miguel von Dangel contemplates contemporary Venezuelan art, as he sees it in the evolution of Western art. He believes that there has been a certain arbitrariness and exhibitionism in contemporary art practices in Venezuela in [...]

The journalist Edgar Alfonzo Sierra interviews the Venezuelan visual artist Magdalena Fernández on the occasion of Dimensiones variables, her exhibitionat the Galería de Arte Nacional. He describes her as a “weaver of spaces” and describes her [...]

The author of this article assesses the main accomplishments of the Venezuelan group El Techo de la Ballena, two years after it was founded. It was considered one of the most spirited groups in the history of Venezuelan art because of the changes it [...]

In this interview with Armando J. Florez, Jacobo Borges states that an artist should have a global perspective when it comes to politics and mankind’s real values, and should be free of any limitations imposed by ideologies. The painter believes [...]

The Venezuelan curator Tahía Rivero writes an analysis of the works of José Luis López-Reus, a local visual artist, in the exhibition Vacivus (Caracas, Sala RG, 1993). Rivero points out that the work of this painter is substantiated by [...]

In this newspaper article, Antonio Velluto describes the incident at the Caracas Cathedral when the parish priest, Augusto Laborem, took a stick to the sculpture Retrato espiritual de un tiempo, by Miguel von Dangel, and destroyed it because he [...]

In this article, Narciso Debourg outlines the difficulties he faces as a young artist of Latin American descent the moment he tries to review, assimilate, or subscribe to any of the present trends he yearns to follow specifically within the European [...]

The art critic José Luis Colin interviews Jacobo Borges on the occasion of the latter’s exhibition at the Galería Arvil in Mexico City. Colin notes this Venezuelan painter’s fascination with human rituals and gestures, timelessness, and the [...]

Mari Carmen Ramírez investigates the theme of “transparency” as a basic element of Gego’s drawings. Ramírez asserts that both Gego’s drawings and her constructions are expressed in a perceptibly ambiguous plane. In fact, they result from [...]

The critic Ariel Jiménez interviews José Luis López Reus, the Venezuelan visual artist, who describes his early days as a self-taught artist exploring the field of geometric abstraction. He explains that, for this exhibition, he stopped using flat [...]

Interviewed by the filmmaker José Antonio Pantin, Gego discusses the gestation of her three-dimensional works, and reiterates her misgivings about classifying her work as “sculpture.” She also insists that “transparency” is her essential [...]

This interview was conducted by researcher María Cristina Valera with Miguel von Dangel, the Venezuelan artist born in Germany, in which he comments on the background, character, and the possible interpretations of his exhibition De engaños y otras [...]

According to the poet Gabriel Araujo, the Venezuelan visual artist Luis Romero’s works on paper stretch limits and genres, and overrun the borders of literature. Romero associates images with words that complement each other (“the opacity of the [...]

In this text, journalist Héctor Mujica examines the artistic qualities of painter Gabriel Bracho in the exhibition of the artist’s work held at the Museo de Bellas Artes of Caracas in 1951. Mujica describes Bracho’s work as “combat painting [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon. However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

In Ruth Auerbach’s opinion, the Venezuelan painter Marylee Coll takes fragments of Western tradition and inserts them into an innovative visual system arranged in a pictorial and handcraft environment with a feminine touch. Coll energizes her work [...]

Juan Liscano reviews the show that Gabriel Bracho had in 1951 at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. The author notes that the painter, a dedicated follower of David Alfaro Siqueiros, “aspires to the fresco” and captures the problems and [...]

The writer Ida Gramcko examines Gego’s Dibujos sin Papel [Drawings without Paper] and reviews them from a poetic perspective. Gramcko claims that, although they are aerial, cosmic works, Gego’s Dibujos sin Papel are metaphors for terrestrial [...]

Marta Traba analyzes the special characteristics of Gego’s visual language by studying the public works rendered by the artist in Caracas. In her opinion, Gego’s work is based on an understanding of the structures that underlie nature and how [...]

Yasmín Monsalve interviews Gego and discusses the artist’s latest project, the series known as Tejeduras [Weavings]. Monsalve mentions certain facets of Gego’s life—such as her arrival in Venezuela and her architectural-engineering studies in [...]

The Venezuelan curator and critic, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas, speaking from a poetic perspective, highlights the relevance of “knots” (nodes) or “knottings” as singular elements in Gego’s visual discourse. The critic sees the knottings in [...]

Hannia Gómez provides an overview of Gego’s architectural/engineering training and how it influenced her work. The former outlines the latter’s academic education and describes the didactic style of most fashionable architectural schools in [...]

In this essay, English critic and curator Guy Brett examines precisely what elements are responsible for making Gego’s creations works of art rather than works of design or visual investigation, both ideas that are closely bound to her work. Brett [...]

Julieta González ponders the urban and artistic context of Gego’s work. According to the former, the latter’s work could be interpreted as a sort of map of the dissolution of the modernist canon, in both formal and self-referential terms. The [...]

Marta Traba analyzes the entire body of artwork integrated with architecture in Caracas created by Gego, and contrasts them with those created by Jesús Soto and Carlos Cruz Díez, practitioners of Venezuelan Kinetic art. Traba observes that Gego’s [...]

In this article, Venezuelan critic and professor Mónica Amor refutes the constructivist and organicist approach that has been used to understand Gego’s work. That approach, she claims, does not address the way Gego’s production undermines [ [...]

Hanni Ossott introduces Gego’s exhibition Gego: Dibujos para proyectos [Gego: Drawings for Projects], which includes the artist’s architectural, design, and art projects from 1937 to 1975. The critic suggests that during her training as an [...]

In this essay, Iris Peruga analyzes most of the work created by Gego between 1955 and 1990. The curator examines the similarities between Gego’s artwork and that of her contemporaries. Examining the artist’s relationship with the trends of [...]

In this essay, Ruth Auerbach discusses Bichos [Creatures]—the three-dimensional works by Venezuelan artist Gego—within the overall context of her production. After providing an overview of Gego’s art, Auerbach states that these works are [...]

Roberto Guevara reviews the work that Gego presented at the exhibition, Gego: Esculturas. 1957–1967 [Gego: Sculpture, 1957–1967] (Caracas: Galería Conkright, 1967). Guevara states that the exhibition is clear and convincing proof of the [...]

In this essay, Colombian critic and journalist Álvaro Burgos analyzes the sculptures by Gego, a Venezuelan artist of German origin, included in the exhibition Gego: Esculturas, 195­7–1967, held in Colombia. Burgos asserts that Gego’s works form [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas describes Gego’s body of work. The curator identifies the artist’s early work in the category of geometric abstraction; however, as she developed, she moved toward an approach that was “organic and [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas studies Gego’s work, Reticulárea (1969) as Venezuela’s first real incursion into contemporary art. The critic contrasts the premises maintained by Venezuelan Syntheticism (which claims to be the last [...]

In this essay, Venezuelan curator Rina Carvajal asserts that by means of the disintegration and reconfiguration of the form, the visual discourse formulated by Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994), a Venezuelan artist of German origin, opened up [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon.                                However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

Lorena González sees similarities between works by Gego and those by the Venezuelan writer Antonia Palacios, in that they are both based on a noticeable sense of temporality. According to González, “the line”—the fundamental element in Gego [...]

This analysis by Catherine de Zegher focuses on Gego’s drawing in space. After an introduction in which she describes earlier works by important artists that engage the notion of drawing in space, as well as those by Gego’s contemporaries, de [...]

Andreína Gómez interviews Elízabeth Gunz on the occasion of Gego. Dibujos. Dibujos, grabados y tejeduras [Gego Drawings: Drawings, Prints, and Weavings] the exhibition presented at the Centro Cultural Consolidado (Caracas, 1996). Elízabeth Gunz ( [...]

In this interview with Gego by Venezuelan journalist A. Feltra, certain aspects of the artist’s life and personality are discussed. Gego says that she does not like to expose her private life to the public, and asserts that her work speaks for [...]

In this article, Yasmín Monsalve reports on Gego’s presence at the Twenty-third São Paulo Biennial in 1996, and on her exhibition Gego. Dibujos. Dibujos, grabados y tejeduras [Gego Drawings: Drawings, Prints, and Weavings] presented that same [...]

Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas believed that as a foreigner in Venezuela, Gego gave her work the function of an “analytical process” by constructing a “neutral space” in a time saturated by Kinetic art and geometric abstraction. Her work resists [...]

Roberto Guevara’s review of Gego’s Reticulárea (1969) was written a year after the work was created and originally installed. Guevara calls it the most complete installation in Venezuelan visual art up to that point (1970) because the open [...]

Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas considers Gego the most important artist in Venezuelan modern art. In his opinion, her work broke through the conventional limits and was situated at the margin of the national art scene as “a work of critical importance [...]

Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas analyzes Gego’s work in light of what he considers her contribution to the history of visual art. The critic considers [the source of] that contribution to be the different artistic milieu in which her artistic life [...]

Curator Kaira Marie Cabañas argues that work by Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994), a Venezuelan artist of German origin, constitutes a “performative geometry” based on a primordial interest in the act of “making.” The configuration of [...]

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 [...]

Journalist Rubén Wisotzki interviewed Magdalena Fernández in 1996, when she was awarded the Premio Eugenio Mendoza. Fernández acknowledges that her work, particularly her studies in design to which abstraction and geometricism are fundamental, is [...]

In this article the group of artists known as La Barraca de Mari-Pérez (Caracas, 1945), based in Mexico at the time, attacked what they considered to be the false revolutionary pretentions of the group Los Disidentes (Paris, 1950), and declined the [...]

In the view of curator Luis Enrique Pérez-Oramas, Juan Araujo’s landscapes have the power to express all the significance that painting can. The works in the exhibition Holanda. Juan Araujo (Caracas: Galería D’Museo, 2002) constitute a free [...]

In this essay, writer Adriano González León presents the vision of love, death, and necrophilia in the show of work by Carlos Contramaestre entitled Homenaje a la Necrofilia. González León conceives of necrophilia as “a resounding adventure [...]