This interview with Luis Guevara Moreno (b. 1926) by Ildemaro Alguindigue provides valuable information about salons in Venezuela at the time and the artist’s opinion of them. Guevara Moreno had recently received two important prizes: the Salón Oficial Anual de Arte Venezolano in Caracas, and the Premio Nacional in the drawing and in the printmaking categories, which—for the second time—were granted separately. Starting in 1959 and through 1968, a single prize in drawing and printmaking was granted by the School of Architecture and Urbanism at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas. That prize was particularly important to graphic arts in Venezuela because, atypically, it presented prints and drawings as autonomous media. In 1967, that event became the Bienal Latinoamericana, though only one edition was held due to lack of support.
This article was written in 1969, when the second edition of the biennial would have been held. Guevara Moreno states in the interview that “[the event] will apparently vanish without anyone demanding that it continue.” Regarding the prints in the Salón Oficial Anual de Arte Venezolano that year, the artist remarks on the patent improvement in terms of technical mastery, aesthetic quality, and creativity compared to works included in earlier editions—testament to the maturity of the artists who, starting in 1960, had worked at the Taller de Luisa Palacios, many of whom were also conducting an intense teaching activities at the same time. This was an important moment in the graphic arts in Venezuela: artists who, albeit under the guidance of Elisa Elvira Zuloaga and Pedro Ángel González, had taught themselves printmaking techniques and learned what they could at the studios of distinguished foreign printmakers were now able to convey their knowledge in a systematic fashion to a group of students.
For an interview with Guevara Moreno by writer J.R. Guillent Pérez where the artist explains why he abandoned abstraction, see “La pintura en Venezuela: Guevara Moreno y la realidad” [ICAA digital archive (doc. no. 1154490)].