Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

José Ratto Ciarlo publishes in 1943 his conversation in tandem with the Chilean artist Marco Bontà Costa and Mercedes Pardo during the opening of the exhibition of the former’s Venezuelan landscapes at the Museo de Bellas Artes in [...]

Ángel Ramos Giugni published this article in Imagen concerning 1x9, a silkscreen exhibition by Mercedes Pardo at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. The modernist abstract artist is praised for maintaining her own “personal rhythm to [...]

This article appeared on the Venezuelan magazine Imagen, focusing on the opening of 1x9, a silkscreen exhibition by the modernist abstract artist Mercedes Pardo, held at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. After a brief introduction with [...]

Mara Comerlati writes a press article about the modernist painter Mercedes Pardo in El Nacional. The exhibition involves her most recent work (twelve paintings and twenty silkscreens), at the Galería Adler/Castillo in Caracas. The subheading [...]

This article, published in the Caracas newspaper El Nacional, announces the upcoming opening of the exhibition 1x9, serigrafia del color by the Venezuelan abstract painter Mercedes Pardo, held at the Museo de Bellas Artes in the capital city. The [...]

The curator Iris Peruga discusses the structure and content of the collection of works at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. She names artists and works, and links them to various key moments in the museum’s history. In her essay she talks about [...]

In this essay, the well-known critic Roberto Guevara discusses the evolution in the Chinese-Venezuelan visual artist Francisco “Chino” Hung’s style. Guevara bases his remarks on a review of the artist’s works from the early 1960s until the [...]

In March 1983, members of the Research Department of the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas interviewed the painter Ivan Petrovszky about his exhibition at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC (that same year). By way of introduction, the [...]

In this critical essay, Roberto Guevara reviews Elsa Gramcko’s geometric abstraction work. Guevara discusses the importance of the abstract movement (to which he belongs) in Venezuela in the 1950s, which he sees as a new and vigorous expression of [...]

In this text, the Venezuelan art critic Roberto Guevara analyzes the visual art of Spanish-born artist Ángel Luque. He relates the new chromatic experimentations made by the artist to works by such artists as Herbin, Manessier, Picasso, and the [...]

Guillermo Meneses, the Venezuelan writer, introduces Mary Brandt’s exhibition at the MBA (Museo de Bellas Artes) in Caracas. Meneses describes Brandt’s early years at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Caracas, and mentions that her father, [...]

The critic Roberto Guevara suggests that the contrast in the Czech-born Venezuelan artist Marietta Berman’s two- and three-dimensional pieces appropriates space in her highly personal work. Guevara notes that the two-dimensional pieces in 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 [...]

This anonymous text provides a detailed review of the rooms and halls of the Museo de Bellas Artes (Caracas) containing the works of the XVIII Salón Oficial de Arte Venezolano (1957). The works, according to the author, were grouped in the space by [...]

This text by Federica Palomero was written for Arte de América, the exhibition she curated in 1988 on the occasion of the anniversary of the founding of the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. The text describes the origins of the collection of Inter- [...]

In this essay, Marco Rodríguez del Camino mentions all the exhibitions that the German-born Venezuelan artist Luisa Richter has presented during the course of her career, while focusing on the issue of composition, which is the central theme of the [...]

This document is an unsigned review announcing the opening of Gego’s environmental work, Reticulárea on Sunday, June 8, 1969, at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. The journalist points out two contradictory perspectives that converge [...]

Roberto Montero Castro reviews the inaugural exhibition of Gego’s Reticulárea (1969) at the Museo de Bellas Artes [Museum of Fine Arts] in Caracas. Montero describes this particular work as an important achievement in which science has been [...]

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 [...]

The title of this unsigned review of the presentation of Gego’s Reticulárea is “Ambiente de Gego inaugura hoy el Museo de Bellas Artes” [A Gego Environment Opens Today at the Museo de Bellas Artes]. It was published in the newspaper La Religi [...]

In this essay, the curator Carmen Hernández reviews Cas(A)nto, the multimedia installation by Antonieta Sosa at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas in 2000. Hernández discusses the artist’s career since her constructive painting in the 1960s [...]

The journalist Josué Mora interviews the artist Manuel Mérida after a solo exhibition in Caracas where the artist exhibits his series Manipulables. The text questions the scant attention that critics had afforded his work since his last exhibition [...]

In this text, Alfredo Boulton considers the works by Venezuelan painter Mateo Manaure on exhibition at the Museo de Bellas Artes. After discussing Manaure’s participation in projects that engage architecture, Boulton examines the specific [...]

Juan Calzadilla begins his critical essay by relating a crisis in geometric abstraction to the exploration of Informalism by Omar Carreño. Calzadilla reflects on Carreño’s embrace of the gestural and material aspects of the trend in his paintings [...]

The critic Carlos Silva interviews the visual artist Omar Carreño on the occasion of his presentation of new work in Venezuela. Silva seeks to explain the inspiration and circumstances that led Carreño to produce a series of Figurative works, [...]

Scholar Susana Benko traces the artistic career of Omar Carreño. After brief reflection on the importance of changes in the understanding of the arts, she recounts and analyzes the significant events in the work of the Venezuelan painter and [...]

The text by Brazilian author Alberto Da Costa e Silva for the exhibition “9 grabadores del Brasil” [Nine Engravers of Brazil] (Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, 1968) presents an expansive view of the history and evolution of engraving in the [...]

This essay by the Venezuelan researcher José Luis Guevara was published in the catalogue for the exhibition Un lector, algunos diseñadores gráficos, una década, at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. Guevara reviews the work of six Venezuelan [...]

This text is an interview by journalist Margarita D’Amico with Venezuelan artist Mercedes Pardo on the occasion of her 1969 exhibition, 1 x 9: color de la serigrafía, held at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. In it, Pardo discusses her [...]

In this article, the critic Roberto Guevara reviews Nenias, the exhibition of works by the artist and graphic designer Gerd Leufert, who lived in Venezuela, at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. Guevara salutes the originality of Leufert’s work [...]

The journalist Pablo Villamizar interviews the painter Alirio Palacios on the occasion of the opening of the latter’s exhibition Xilografías y concretografías. Grabado 1994–1999 at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. The 1999 exhibition [...]

Journalist Carlos Paolillo reviews the Gladys Meneses retrospective exhibition at the Museo de Bellas Artes (Caracas, 1986). Paolillo discusses the fundamental milestones in the education and career of the Venezuelan artist. These point to a focus on [...]

The researcher Victoria de Stefano wrote the introduction to a catalogue for the 1985 exhibition Nenias by the graphic designer Gerd Leufert at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. She provides an overview of the artist’s work, in contrast with [...]

In this article, the critic Roberto Guevara reviews the works presented by the artist Mario Abreu at the exhibition Objetos Mágicos (Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, 1965). Guevara states that Abreu’s magical objects are among the most important [...]

In this essay, the curator Katherine Chacón writes about the artist Javier Téllez. She refers to the conceptual lucidity of his work which, in her opinion, stands out among other examples of contemporary Venezuelan art. Chacón reviews the artist [...]

In twelve aphorisms, the Venezuelan artist Javier Téllez lists his thoughts about the qualities and possible states of objects—either autonomous or in groups, virgin or used—and makes a number of suggestions concerning how people should behave [...]

This text written by the art critic Roberto Guevara is the preface to the catalogue for the exhibition Pinturas, which exhibited work by the French artist Marcel Floris, who had been living in Caracas since 1950. The exhibition was held at the Museo [...]

This essay by Venezuelan writer Oswaldo Trejo analyzes the art of Elsa Gramcko. It describes a number of characteristics of the Venezuelan artist’s creative world, specifically how she uses matter as the defining “content” of her work. Trejo [...]

In this essay, the critic Juan Calzadilla discusses the exploration of Informalist abstract movements by Venezuelan artist Elsa Gramcko, who was in search of new “textures” with which to express her ideas in physical form. Calzadilla describes [...]

Journalist Luis Buitrago interviews painter Oswaldo Vigas on the occasion of his exhibition of tapestries at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. In Vigas’s view, the works in this show sum up his pictorial development and demonstrate the range of [...]

The journalist Lenelina Delgado interviews the Venezuelan painter Oswaldo Vigas on the occasion of the exhibition of the latter’s tapestries at the MBA (Museo de Bellas Artes) in Caracas. During the course of the conversation, they discuss how the [...]

Carlos Díaz Sosa interviewed Venezuelan artist Luis Chacón on the occasion of the exhibition New International Gravure Group, which featured Chacón’s work, held at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. The article points out that Chacón was the [...]

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 [...]

The press release refers to the first exhibition of the work of Venezuelan artist Gabriel Bracho at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. The opening featured a large crowd from various segments of society. It reviews the great success in support and [...]

The critic Juan Calzadilla introduces the exhibition of prints by Luis Chacón at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, discussing the lack of a printmaking tradition and wondering what the artist might do to remedy the void in training opportunities [...]

This is Marta Traba’s critical review of the exhibition of silkscreen prints by Susy Iglicki at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. Traba discusses the Venezuelan artist’s use of space, color, planes, and volumes, while referring to her [...]

In this brief prologue to the catalogue of his exhibition Nedo: Reversámbitos held at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas in 1973, Italian-born Venezuelan designer and artist Nedo [Mion Ferrario] describes his experience of space in terms of [...]

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 [...]

This text is a review of the well-attended exhibition of work by Gabriel Bracho held at the Salón del Museo de Bellas Artes. The text describes Bracho as a good draftsman and colorist; it addresses his Marxist inclination and concern with social [...]

In this critical review, the Venezuelan writer Guillermo Meneses reviews the exhibition of works by the Venezuelan painter Alejandro Otero [Rodríguez] that opened on January 30, 1949 at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. Otero was living in Paris [...]