A year after Elisa Elvira Zuloaga’s death, Juan Carlos Palenzuela takes a broad look at her contributions to Venezuelan culture, not just as an artist but as a promoter as well. In Palenzuela’s opinion, Zuloaga’s greatest contribution was to the training of Venezuelan artists, both at home and abroad. The critic and historian notes that “Elisa Elvira Zuloaga represented the modernizing trend in Venezuelan painting in the 1940s.” Palenzuela mentions this artist’s pioneering role in printmaking, and briefly discusses her extensive but little-known activity as a printmaker. He also mentions Prueba de artista, the exhibition that TAGA organized in her honor.

After devoting part of his article to the evolution and career of Elisa Elvira Zuloaga (1900–80), the Venezuelan painter and cultural promoter Juan Carlos Palenzuela (1954–2007) moves on to discuss her printmaking. It is interesting to read about this little-known facet of Zuolaga’s creative output; she only had seven exhibitions during her lifetime, and did not show her prints at all of them. TAGA organized an important posthumous exhibition of her work in 1981, as mentioned by the Venezuela critic and historian. But, as Palenzuela said, Zuloaga’s graphic work demands its own very specific and highly detailed study. Palenzuela first heard about her printmaking from Miguel Arroyo (1920–2004), the Venezuelan critic and museologist who claims that Zuloaga started the graphic arts in Venezuela [see Breve historia del grabado en metal (Caracas: Museo de Bellas Artes, 1975)]. Zuloaga was indeed, together with Pedro Ángel González, a pioneer of modern Venezuelan printmaking. She took painting classes from Stanley William Hayter and André Lhote.

As regards her cultural activities, it should be noted that she was the Director of Culture and Fine Arts at the Ministry of Education during the brief presidency of the writer Rómulo Gallegos (February through November 1948). In that role, Zuloaga helped Venezuelan artists study abroad and, in Venezuela, sponsored the TLA (Taller Libre de Arte), a studio workshop for the young avant-garde. She also started the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas in 1945, which awarded a grant to study for a little while in Paris.