Papelitos Blog

New in the Archive: Mercedes Pardo’s Milestones

Lee esta entrada en español.

“Color is an instrument of a vast, infinite, inexhaustible range and that has been what I have expressed, what I have wanted to say in art.” – Mercedes Pardo, 1979

Mercedes Pardo (1921–2005) was a Venezuelan artist, teacher, and pioneer of abstract painting in her home country. As the writer María Ramírez Ribes describes in a 1991 article, Pardo’s work “seeks to be presence, sensation, and color. There is no criticism nor message in her work, only experiences and encounters with the vastness of light and its chromatic possibilities” (1331187). The ICAA recently added more than 30 documents on Pardo to Documents Project spanning major milestones of her career, available here.

1×9, 1969. Record ID: 1331596

These include coverage of Pardo’s winning the 1960 Premio Puebla de Bolívar at the XXI Salón Oficial de Arte (1331692); coverage of the 1969 exhibition 1×9 (1331596) at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas; an interview with the artist on the occasion of her first retrospective, Color: piel, presencia meditada, in 1979 at the Galeria de Arte Nacional (GAN) in Caracas (1331363); poet and essayist Ida Gramcko’s celebration of Pardo being awarded the prestigious Premio Armando Reverón in 1991 (1331139); and coverage of Mercedes Pardo: Moradas del Color (1325266) a 1991 retrospective of more than 250 works at the GAN.

The Otero Pardo Foundation today promotes the legacy of Pardo and her husband, Alejandro Otero (1921–90), “two Venezuelan artists who achieved most of their creative work side by side.” The Foundation graciously provided access to this selection of documents, and the ICAA is proud to expand our holdings on this important figure in Venezuelan modernism.

La pintura es el lenguaje que busca expresar el concepto del mundo, 1960. Record ID: 1331692
María Josefa Pérez, Mercedes Pardo : yo siempre era la esposa de Alejandro y no una artista, 1979. Record ID: 1331363
Miriam Freilich, El arte es revelación, no producción, 1991. Record ID: 1325266

Lillian Michel is the Digital Experience Specialist at the ICAA.

No comments yet

Log in or register to comment

Recent Posts

New in the Archive: Carlos Cruz-Diez through the Decades

Selected by ICAA Director Mari Carmen Ramírez with the artist while he was still living, nearly 100 documents from the archive of the Cruz-Diez Documentation Center, in collaboration with the Cruz-Diez Foundation, will be published in the ICAA’s Documents Project this year, commemorating the centennial of the artist’s birth. […]

More

2022 Peter C. Marzio Award Winners Announced

The ICAA is pleased to announce the winners of the 2022 competition for the Peter C. Marzio Award for Outstanding Research in Latin American and Latino Art. Named for the late, longtime director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), who supported the establishment of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas […]

More

Object-Based Learning Seminar Spotlight: Zoie Buske

I have had the privilege of participating in the Object-Based Learning (OBL) Latin American and Latinx art course twice, once in my undergraduate career and again in graduate school. I can, without a doubt, pinpoint this course as a turning point in my understanding of art and art history. The object-based learning methodology has also […]

More

Dále Gas Turns 45

“A new era in Chicano art is beginning! ¡DÁLE GAS!” With this call to action, the artist and curator Santos Martinez Jr. heralded a historic moment. On August 20, 1977, the first major museum exhibition of Chicano art in Texas opened to the public at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH). Dále Gas: An Exhibition of […]

More