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, Continúa el espectáculo, 1964), and the book La Montaña y su Tiempo, 1979. Over the course of his career, according to Ramos, Borges has taken a comprehensive look at society and does so again in La Comunión, in a recapitulation that combines epic, theatrical, and political aspects with its “incomprehensible,” intimate, and symbolic features.

This critical review by the curator María Elena Ramos (b. 1948) is the main essay in the catalogue for La Comunión (Caracas: Galería de Arte Nacional, 1981), the exhibition of works by the Venezuelan painter Jacobo Borges (b. 1931). 

Throughout his career, Borges has presented exhibitions that explored a particular subject in a series of works; La Comunión is such an exhibition. In her essay, Ramos turns her attention to the subjects that interest this artist, discussing how they remain current or influence his latest series, which she describes as a synthesis of all his earlier ones. Ramos sees Borges as a “narrator” who uses gestures, spaces, rituals, and the cultural resonance of images to tell his stories. Ramos analyzes the formal elements in this artist’s work (time, space, and color) from a thematic point of view, thus exposing the evolution, transformation, or simultaneity of “the immediate” and “the timeless.” She also mentions the open or intimate spaces in his painting, as well as its chromatic “memory.” 

To read more about this artist’s work, see by Donald Kuspit “Jacobo Borges’s creation of potential space / Jacobo Borges e la creazione dello spazio potenziale” [doc. no. 1060608]; by Perán Erminy “Una exposición de obras de Jacobo Borges” [doc. no. 1060424]; by Inocente Palacios “Jacobo Borges” [doc. no. 106036]); and by Roberto Guevara “(Sin título) [Un día el poeta sentó la belleza en sus rodillas… ]” [doc. no. 1060477]; the essay by the historian Berta Taracena “Jacobo Borges en México” [doc. no. 1063795]; the newspaper review by Elizabeth Pérez Luna “Jacobo Borges. La pasión de la identidad” [doc. no. 1063714]; the interview by Lenelina Delgado “Somos una ficción” [doc. no. 1063831]; by Armando J. Florez “El artista debe superar las limitaciones de las ideologías. Jacobo Borges en Nueva York” [doc. no. 1065435]; and by José Luis Colin “Entre la acción colectiva y la búsqueda individual: Jacobo Borges” [doc. no. 1063769]. Juan Calzadilla wrote two articles about the artist, “Presentación” [doc. no. 1060392], and “(Sin título) [Hasta ahora lo que entre nosotros se había llamado…]” [doc. no. 1060684].