Carlos Contramaestre, a member of the El Techo de la Ballena group, reviews the life and work of the Venezuelan painter, photographer, and writer Salvador Valero. He discusses Valero’s rural origins, his early introduction to drawing and painting (with analine dye), and his eventual migration to oil paint under the guidance of artisan maestros. Contramaestre mentions Valera’s skill with a linoleum block, which he used for newspaper reviews, and with a camera. The critic also notes the social and political conscience that Valera inherited from his father, who urged him to steer clear of the commercial side of art. Contramaestre suggests that Valero’s death deprived us of the “last imaginero” [maker of religious images].     

The Venezuelan painter and art critic Carlos Contramaestre (1933–96) is not only considered the most significant member of the Informalist avant-garde group El Techo de la Ballena (Caracas, 1961–65); he is also responsible for discovering and supporting several important folk artists who were not academically trained, such as Emerio Darío Lunar, Antonio José Fernández “el Hombre del Anillo,” Josefina Sulbarán, Gonzalo Eraso and, especially, Salvador Valero (1903–76), from Trujillo, whom he met in 1951. Contramaestre’s essay, published in the catalogue for the posthumous exhibition of Valero’s work, includes vital details about how this painter, draftsman, printmaker, and photographer got his start, revealing the circumstances and the names of the “maestros” with whom he worked. If anything distinguishes this painter from other folk artists who have been discovered since 1948 (Feliciano Carvallo and Bárbaro Rivas, for example), it is the insistent beat of protest in his works, which tend to be focused on society’s ills, as the author explains in his review of Hiroshima, “a painting riven with apocalyptic convulsions, pointing an accusing finger at those who dropped that mushroom of death and shame on the Earth.” The catalogue essay contains a bonus in the form of several examples of the painter Valero’s narrative talent, collected by the critic. Contramaestre’s essay was subsequently published in his book Poética del escalpelo (Caracas: Conac, 2000).