Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

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 [...]

Roberto Guevara reviewed Gego’s Reticulárea (1969) when it was first installed at the Museo de Bellas Artes [Museum of Fine Arts] in Caracas. He mentions the artist’s use of space within the Reticulárea, which acquires a new environmental [...]

According to English critic and curator Guy Brett, abstract works of art, whether systematic or informal in nature, can be seen as models of the universe. It is on this premise that he studies Gego’s work. Brett maintains that the work of many [...]

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 [...]

Art historian Hanna Feldman takes issue with critics who approach Gego’s art from a nationalist (Venezuelan) perspective, which she believes limits its scope and social importance. Feldman asserts that contemporary experiences of migration, exile, [...]

French critic and art historian Yve-Alain Bois bases his analysis of Gego’s work, particularly Reticulárea (1969), on poetic texts from ancient Greece, as well as the philosophy of Lucretiusand of Karl Marx. In his analysis, Bois, who taught 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 [...]

This document shows a fragment of the score, Music of Changes, by the American composer John Cage, to be presented as an accompaniment to Gego’s environmental work, Reticulárea, in the exhibition Spielraum-Raumspiele [Play Room/Play Space] at the [...]

Venezuelan journalist Mara Comerlati interviews Gego about the exhibition of watercolors that will be held at the Galería de Arte Nacional (GAN) in Caracas in August 1982. She also provides information about the most important moments in Gego’s [...]

Venezuelan journalist Lenelina Delgado reports on an exhibition of watercolors by Gego that will be held at the Galería de Arte Nacional (GAN) in Caracas. Delgado provides an overview of Gego’s career, describing her as the most coherent artist [...]

This document is the first issue of the magazine Rayado sobre el Techo published by the visual artists and writers who formed part of El Techo de la Ballena, a group active in Caracas from 1961 to 1968. This issue contains texts crucial to the group [...]

The cultural agent Axel Stein interviews Carlos Zerpa in the catalogue for the exhibition Three Venezuelans in Two Dimensions. Miguel von Dangel. Ernesto León. Carlos Zerpa (New York: Americas Society Art Gallery, 1988). Zerpa discusses his training [...]

Axel Stein, the well-known cultural agent, interviews Ernesto León (b. 1956) for an article in the catalogue for the exhibition Three Venezuelans in Two Dimensions. Miguel von Dangel. Ernesto León. Carlos Zerpa (New York: Americas Society Art [...]

Axel Stein, the cultural agent, interviews Miguel von Dangel for an article in the catalogue for the exhibition Three Venezuelans in Two Dimensions. Miguel von Dangel. Ernesto León. Carlos Zerpa (New York: Americas Society Art Gallery, 1988). Von [...]

Journalist Gustavo Manrique interviews Mario Abreu for this exhibition Objetos Mágicos [Magic Objects] (Caracas: Museo de Bellas Artes, 1965). The Venezuelan artist defines himself as an American painter who has used elements of Santeria in his [...]

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 [...]

Miguel von Dangel begins this article with a story about the death of a horse that was used in [medical] experiments. His wish that the horse be given a compassionate death was stymied, and instead, the horse ended up dying slowly, in painful agony, [...]

In this article Miguel von Dangel describes the three classifications he uses for images and art. Inspired by Umberto Eco’s semiological ideas, the first of these explains the depiction of horror and monstrous ideas in art as a way to reveal “the [...]

In this interview with Miguel von Dangel by Yasmín Monsalve, the artist shares his reaction to having been awarded the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas de Venezuela in 1991. Von Dangel recounts how he got his start in the arts and explains his [...]

Juan Calzadilla wrote this critical text as a preface to the catalogue for Miguel von Dangel’s exhibition Sacrifixiones (1969). The essay starts with comments on the artist’s beginnings in taxidermy. Calzadilla explains how, during his time at [...]

This text by writer and critic José Balza is the introduction to Las Puertas del reino, an exhibition of work by Venezuelan artist Mario Abreu. In it, Balza asserts that there is more to Abreu than his public image as a medium of the occult. His [...]

This interview with Miguel von Dangel, conducted by Aurora Blyde, examines the artist’s career from its beginnings to date, making reference to his chief exhibitions and his most important works. Von Dangel believes it is an artist’s duty to [...]

Mario Abreu wrote this introduction for his exhibition Objetos Mágicos, held at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas in 1965. The Venezuelan visual artist maintains that it is through artistic arrangement and contradictions that he continues “to [...]

This is a selection of notes taken from the diary of the German-born Venezuelan visual artist Miguel von Dangel and published in the catalogue for the exhibition La Batalla de San Romano, in which the artist presents his version of the homonymous [...]

In the “Tercer Manifiesto” produced by El Techo de la Ballena (Caracas, 1961–68), Adriano González León explains the group’s activities and the bond they share, under the pretext of defending the group’s name, which had raised some [...]

This introduction to Carlos Contramaestre’s exhibition Los Tumorales is divided into two parts: the first was written by the artist himself and the second by Juan Calzadilla (both were members of the El Techo de la Ballena group). In his section, [...]

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 & [...]

In this text, Ángel Rama analyzes and assesses the importance of El Techo de la Ballena, an avant-garde group that emerged in Venezuela in the early sixties. He reproduces a selection of what he considers the group’s most important writings, [...]

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 [...]

German critic Wieland Schmied establishes that Jacobo Borges has incorporated certain influences from the European tradition into his work through a difficult process. From his perspective as a historian, Schmied explains that the Venezuelan painter [...]

Venezuelan journalist Lenelina Delgado interviews Jacobo Borges on his show, La Comunión. The artist explains that the works in La Comunión were conceptually based on a photograph. He states that by means of the ritual nature of the works in the [...]

Historian Berta Taracena discusses the trajectory of painter Jacobo Borges in relation to the works presented in the show Jacobo Borges: magia de un realismo crítico,held in Mexico City. She explains that Borges’s early work makes use of [...]

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 [...]

Journalist Elisabeth Pérez Luna describes the audiovisual show produced at Parque Central in the framework of the III Conferencia del Mar and interviews its creator and producer, Jacobo Borges. Pérez Luna explains that the show entailed a [...]

Written by the members of the group El Techo de la Ballena and published in the first issue of their magazine Rayado sobre el Techo, this essay expresses their desire to return to matter—that is, to “the magma”—in an original act that frees [...]

The critic Juan Calzadilla wrote this prologue for Borges. Las Jugadoras, the exhibition at the Galería del Techo [de la Ballena]. Calzadilla describes Jacobo Borges’ work as being representative of a new kind of painting that—while not entirely [...]

In this review, Adolfo Wilson discusses the work produced by Jacobo Borges over the course of two decades, from the 1960s to the 1980s. Wilson reviews the visual artist’s most significant work from that period, analyzing his production as though it [...]

The North American professor Donald Kuspit discusses the work of Jacobo Borges in terms of its creation of “potential spaces,” referring to the concept used in the jargon of psychoanalysis. In a potential space—defined as an area midway between [...]

In this article María Elena Ramos reviews the La Comunión series by the Venezuelan painter Jacobo Borges, which she finds to be a synthesis of the main ideas he had explored in earlier works, such as El Espectáculo (Ha comenzado el espectáculo, [...]

This essay by the critic and curator Roberto Guevara appeared in the catalogue for the exhibition 10 pintores venezolanos de la nueva figuración. In his opinion, figuration has gone down the same cyclical and unstable path as all the other [...]

This brief work of fiction by Julio Cortázar, which is dedicated to the Venezuelan painter Jacobo Borges, was inspired by the painting Reunión con un círculo rojo. The Argentinean writer’s main character in the story, Jacobo,  steps into a [...]

The critic and historian Perán Erminy evaluates the work presented by the painter Jacobo Borges at the exhibition Jacobo Borges. Dibujos recientes,hosted by the ¡Viva México! gallery in Caracas. Erminy claims that the Venezuelan artist’s goal is [...]

This text by critic Juan Calzadilla is the introduction to the catalogue for Magia de un realismo crítico, an exhibition of work by Jacobo Borges organized by the Galería de Arte Nacional in 1976. Calzadilla asserts that, of all Venezuelan artists [...]

In this prologue to an exhibition held at Estudio Actual in 1972, critic Inocente Palacios analyzes Jacobo Borges’s pictorial work, which he considers socially committed art. He asserts that the decline of the representation of the human figure, [...]

The writer Adriano González León contributes the prologue to the anthology of poems by Caupolicán Ovalles—¿Duerme usted, señor presidente?—in the homonymous book produced by El Techo de la Ballena artists’ group. González León claims [...]

Francisco Pérez Perdomo wrote the prologue for Asfalto-Infierno, the book by Adriano González Léon (text) and Daniel González (photographs), published by El Techo de la Ballena (Caracas, 1961–68), the group to which these artists belonged. Pé [...]

This is the second issue of Rayado sobre el Techo, the magazine published by the visual artists and writers in the group El Techo de la Ballena (Caracas, 1961–68). Inspired by the slogan “Change life, transform society,” this issue included the [...]

This critique is about the publication of a pamphlet printed at the UCV (Universidad Central de Venezuela), whose content dealt with “aberrant deviations of eroticism.” The anonymous article states that the pamphlet caused outrage toward the [...]

In this article the members of the group El Techo de la Ballena (Caracas, 1961–68) explain what prompted them to create the group. Keeping the works of the Surrealist and Dadaist movements in mind, but with no intention of reviving them, the [...]

In this text, the members of El Techo de la Ballena, a group that emerged in the sixties, in Caracas, delineated the differences between categories such as “tacky,” “unfortunate,” and “ridiculous” in the exhibition, Homenaje a la cursiler [...]