This article by the Venezuelan journalist A. M. I. (Adriana Meneses Imber, b. 1959) is important because it focuses on a key stage in the career of Luisa Palacios (1923–90), when she produced special edition books—belles livres as they were known in France—in an undisguised rebuff of printing’s mechanization of art. So says the critic Alejandro Salas in the program for El Bello Libro (Caracas: Galería de Arte Nacional, 2001). Palacios was the driving force behind many editorial projects of this nature, such as: Elegía coral a Andrés Eloy Blanco (the first, produced in 1961); an article by Miguel Otero Silva with the artist’s illustrations, one of the only two manuscripts in existence, hand written by her daughter María Fernanda Palacios; Me llamo barro by the Spanish Republican poet Miguel Hernández (1964, that also contained prints by Palacios); Humilis Herba (1967, an article by Aníbal Nazoa, illustrated by Alejandro Otero, Humberto Jaimes Sánchez, and her); and La rosa del herbolario (1969, text by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, prints by Palacios). These are a few projects of this nature with which the artist was closely involved.
The article is signed by A. M. I., the initials used by the journalist and daughter of Sofía Imber (b. 1924), a well-known figure in Venezuela. Meneses Imber shields her identity behind an acronym because, at that time, her mother was the director of the cultural section of El Universal, the Caracas newspaper, as well as being the director of what was then called MAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas).
