Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The curator María Elena Ramos provides a broad overview of Alejandro Otero’s oeuvre on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition of his work. Ramos reflects on the Venezuelan painter and sculptor’s essential concerns which, in her opinion, wove [...]

Juan Calzadilla refers to the latest installment in Alejandro Otero’s Papeles coloreados series; he calls the artist’s current period his most important one since Coloritmos, and identifies an underlying synthesis of the artist’s creative [...]

Critic and philosopher J. R. Guillent Pérez reflects on the 1960s series by Alejandro Otero, Ensamblajes y encolados [Assemblages and Glued Pieces]. From his point of view, the author explains Otero’s journey through informalism, and afterward, [...]

Writer Elizabeth Schön critiques the Coloritmos series by Alejandro Otero, and speculates that the intention of the series is its potential for producing visual-chromatic emotions. In this regard, Schön examines the theme of the Coloritmos, whose [...]

The artist Gabriel Morera; the writers José Balza, Jesús Enrique Guédez and Salvador Garmendia; the playwrights Román Chalbaud and Isaac Chocrón; and the graphic designer Nedo all make different statements about the relationship between the [...]

This unsigned text collects a handful of testimonies about design in Venezuela. It includes comments by the collector Hans Neumann, the graphic designer Nedo [Mion Ferrario], the writer Salvador Garmendia, the sociologist Alfredo Chacón, the visual [...]

This article includes comments by writers, poets, dramatists, and designers who were involved with CAL, the magazine published in Caracas, devoted to art criticism, art, and literature, which appeared from 1962 through 1967. These comments address [...]

Curator María Luz Cárdenas discusses the magazine CAL, which was published from 1962 to 1967. Due to the ideology and cultural characteristics of CAL, Cárdenas considers it “the last avant-garde” effort to emerge in Venezuela. Cárdenas values [...]

Gallery owner Clara Diament Sujo reviews the book Who’s Who in Graphic Art (Zurich: The Graphic Press, 1962), which gathers together the most renowned graphic designers and illustrators in the world. The author describes the characteristics of the [...]

The fifth issue of the magazine CAL contains an array of articles on literature, the visual arts, poetry, philosophy, photography, and criticism relevant to the Venezuelan cultural scene of the day. Outstanding in this issue are the following [...]

The collector Hans Neumann discusses the Informalist movement’s connection to the emotions, transcendent universes, and what he describes as a “prophetic” nature. He sees Informalism as mankind’s logical reaction to the inexplicable nature of [...]

This is the script for a documentary about Jesús Rafael Soto, written by Clara Diament de Sujo—the noted essayist and gallery owner, who lived in Caracas at that time—and produced by Ángel Hurtado for National Television – Canal 5 (Venezuela [...]

This text by Guillermo Meneses is a presentation of CAL magazine, which he founded. Published in the magazine’s first issue, Meneses’s text explains the meaning of the letters in the publication’s name: C refers to crítica (criticism), A to [...]

The Venezuelan critic Roberto Guevara discusses Vertical vibrante—the work by the Venezuelan painter and sculptor Alejandro Otero—which he considers to be a seminal achievement in the Venezuelan visual arts. Guevara ponders the different stages [...]

Roberto Guevara writes this criticism about the series Tablones by Alejandro Otero. The writer refers to a dynamic that prevails in art: providing solutions that feature continuity along with a range of explorations. Guevara analyzes how the “ [...]

In this text, researcher Mariana Figarella reflects on the Las cafeteras series (1949) by Venezuelan painter and sculptor Alejandro Otero on exhibit at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. On the grounds of certain characteristics of Otero’s work [...]

In this article, the Venezuelan critic Roberto Montero Castro talks about the question of “identity” in art, the role of professional art criticism in Venezuela, and the underlying inspiration for the work of Oswaldo Vigas, with whom he discusses [...]

In this essay, Juan Calzadilla discusses Alejandro Otero’s contribution to the field of visual art instruction. Calzadilla acknowledges Otero’s leading role in the promotion of Abstract painting and sculpture, and education, by noting the support [...]

Damián Bayón reviews Alejandro Otero’s paintings and sculptures in search of what he calls their “dynamic space.” The Argentine critic and historian discusses Otero’s earliest work and the synthesis in his landscapes, then associates his [...]

The curator María Elena Ramos reflects once again on the role of “structure” in Alejandro Otero’s work on the occasion of an exhibition of works that address that theme. Ramos notes the Venezuelan painter and sculptor’s curiosity that leads [...]

In this text, critic Federica Palomero explores the development of Venezuelan painter Víctor Hugo Irazábal, from his formative period (the early sixties) and subsequent experimentation with various media and genres through his encounter with the [...]

The curator and cultural promotor Tahía Rivero launches into her essay on the work of Pedro Tagliafico with a quote from Aristotle about agora [space]. After outlining this Venezuelan mixed media painter and artist’s career and his commitment to [...]

In this text, Edgar Alfonso Sierra reviews the exhibition Renacimiento by the Venezuelan sculptor Joel Casique. Here, the journalist provides a general description of the exhibition, which includes installations of small sculptures and [manipulated] [...]

The critic Víctor Guédez reviews the work of the Venezuelan painter, engraver, and sculptor William Stone. He structures his readings at three levels: conceptual, aesthetic, and visual. At each level, Guédez points out the distinctive feature in [...]

In his critical review, Roberto Guevara addresses the roles of “process” and experimentation in the painter Ismael Mundaray’s work. Guevara evaluates Mundaray’s expressive resources and discusses the dynamic that allows the artist’s [...]

In this essay, the critic Roberto Guevara discusses the Cuban-born Venezuelan painter Rolando Dorrego’s career and latest work. Guevara begins with a review of the art movement of the early 1970s (in which Dorrego was an active participant), which [...]

Ariel Jiménez interviews the painter Patricia van Dalen, asking her about her training, her personal view of art and painting, and the various experiences that led her to develop her own particular visual art language. The Venezuelan artist talks [...]

Roberto Guevara offers his thoughts in a critique of the artwork presented in Venezuela by the painter María Zabala, based on her most recent design using neon light. Guevara offers some background on Zabala’s creative life that illustrates her [...]

“Time” and its “behavior” are the ideas used by the Venezuelan curator Ernesto Guevara as a starting point for his analysis of the artwork of Alejandro Otero (1921–1990). After focusing on this concept and its relationship to life and other [...]

Venezuelan critic Roberto Guevara comments on the underlying concept of the Venezuelan representation at the XII São Paulo Biennial in 1973; it consisted of a collective work by Margot Römer, Ana María Mazzei, William Stone, Rolando Dorrego, and [...]

In this essay, the critic Víctor Guédez reviews Alejandro Otero’s sculptural work, basing his comments on its visual, technical, and conceptual aspects. As regards the visual aspects, Guédez identifies movement, time, space, and light as Otero [...]

The Venezuelan critic Juan Carlos Palenzuela examines the career trajectory of Alejandro Otero from the perspective of the notions of “innovation” and “renewal.” [According to Palenzuela,] the lucidity that the Venezuelan artist and sculptor [...]

In this text, researcher Adolfo Wilson analyzes Venezuelan painter Emilia Azcárate’s work on the basis of the notions of “trace” and “sign.” According to Wilson, Azcárate’s art can be understood as a “linguistic and communicative [...]

Roberto Guevara briefly summarizes the career of Venezuelan painter and mixed media artist Pedro Tagliafico in light of the imprint left on contemporary art by the historic avant-garde trends and events of the twentieth century. Guevara reviews [...]

In this article, the Venezuelan painter, draftsman, and graphic designer Víctor Hugo Irazábal shares some of the notes he made during his travels to the state of Amazonas in Venezuela in 1995. The artist discusses his reflections on the exploration [...]

Journalist Margarita D’Amico dedicates this text to a new art form: video. The author shows the versatility of this new medium as well as its ability to capture the diverse areas of human activity. The aspects she highlights include the possibility [...]

In this introductory text, critic Inocente Palacios reflects on the precedents of Venezuelan Kinetic art and the changes it proposes in the relationship between the artist and the material, on the one hand, and between the viewer and the work, on the [...]

Federica Palomero launches into this essay with a brief history of the MBA (Museo de Bellas Artes) in Caracas, and the steady growth of the Museum’s Collection of Latin American Art. Palomero posits that one can see the history of Latin American [...]

In this essay, María Luz Cárdenas reviews the latest work produced by Milton Becerra, the Venezuelan sculptor and artist who works with new media, focusing specifically on his installation Naturaleza y espíritu. Cárdenas compares Becerra’s work [...]

The critic Roberto Guevara reviews the career of the Venezuelan ceramicist Noemí Márquez from a perspective that underscores her strategies in terms of the environment. Using this idea as his organizing principle, Guevara addresses each stage in [...]

The curator Luis Ángel Duque offers a critical review of the artistic career of Jorge Pizzani during the 1980s. The text covers a period of successive expressive transitions by Pizzani: from drawing to painting, from paper to canvas, and from color [...]

Ariel Jiménez interviews the Venezuelan mixed media artist Luis Lartitegui during the course of the latter’s second one-man show. Throughout the conversation, Lartitegui discusses the inspirations for his work and emphasizes its conceptual nature [...]

Critic Víctor Guédez develops three themes in this text on the work of Víctor Hugo Irazábal. First, he reviews his graphic trajectory, starting with his education and participation in collectives, his subsequent artistic inquiries and the [...]

In this text, critic Juan Calzadilla reflects on the relationship between sculpture and ceramics and on the possibilities of the latter to take on a monumental scale. He considers the work of ceramicist Noemí Márquez an example of that move into [...]

In this text, María Luz Cárdenas discusses Ricardo Benaim’s artistic development and the premise presented in Una visión de Gaia, a solo exhibition of his paintings and prints. Cárdenas describes Benaim’s work as an example of critical [...]

In this essay, published in the catalogue for the first edition of the Bienal Barro de América (1992), the art critic Roberto Guevara discusses the concept of being uprooted and what that means in terms of a Venezuelan event that seeks to establish [...]

The researcher Iris Peruga reviews the works created by the Uruguayan sculptor Gonzalo Fonseca over the course of two decades and assembled here for this one-man show. Peruga begins by mentioning the quality of the works that allude to invisible [...]

In this text, the Venezuelan artist and critic Perán Erminy reflects on the relationships between the so-called art categories of “popular art” and “non-popular art” in contemporary art and in the framework of the exhibition Confluencias. [...]

The curator Iris Peruga developed a material reading of the work by the Venezuelan painter Oscar Pellegrino based on one of the main resources he used in the process of expressing himself: material substance. Her essay focuses on the link between the [...]

The writer Ivonne Rivas begins this text on the Venezuelan painter Onofre Frías with the history of the problem of the spatial element in art. This was first addressed by the Impressionists, then turned into a major issue by 20th century artists. [...]