In this essay, Guillermo Barrios describes the exhibition El espíritu de los tiempos (Caracas: Ateneo de Caracas / Galería Los Espacios Cálidos, 1991) as a confluence of five different points of view, expressed by the participating curators who, each in their own way, discuss the artistic spirit or mood of that period of time. Barrios explains that, according to Zuleiva Vivas, Claudio Perna’s work expresses “an urgent contemporary need to reestablish contact with worldly subjects.” Graciela Pantin focuses on the concept of “integration” that, in her opinion, is inversely proportionate to the concept of “originality,” which she seeks to demonstrate by presenting a work jointly produced by Susana Amundaraín and Xiomara Moreno. Taking a different approach, María Elena Ramos expresses the sense of doubt that pervades the spirit of the period with works by José Antonio Hernández-Diez. Taking a different approach, Ariel Jiménez discusses José Gabriel Fernández’s “work in progress” rather than the finished work. And finally, Miguel Miguel presents a work by Alfred Wenemoser and a “blank text.”   

The exhibition El espíritu de los tiempos—organized by the Ateneo de Caracas in 1991 to celebrate their 60th anniversary—is representative of the neo-conceptualist work being produced in Venezuela in the 1990s. The brainchild of the Venezuelan curator Guillermo Barrios, this exhibition brought together five distinguished curators and critics, each of whom chose one or two artists and wrote an essay about them and their work. In addition to this essay, in which Barrios outlines the idea for the exhibition, there were others contributed by his guests, as follows: by Graciela Pantin “Reflexiones en torno a la contemporaneidad en las artes visuales venezolanas: ‘4 minutos para mirar’ una obra de Susana Amundaraín y Xiomara Moreno” [doc. no. 1222405];  Zuleiva Vivas writes about Claudio Perna in “Las opciones del tiempo para el nuevo espíritu” [doc. no. 1065674]; Ariel Jiménez writes about José Gabriel Fernández in “El espíritu de los tiempos” [doc. no. 1097294]; and, by María Elena Ramos “El espíritu de los tiempos. Y por qué José Antonio Hernández-Diez” [doc. no. 1065692]. Miguel Miguel chose the artist Alfred Wenemoser, but declined to write an essay. 

In his essay, Barrios discusses this exhibition that, by adopting and addressing universal languages and subjects, showcases a collection of “committed art” that boldly comments on Venezuelan society in 1991, eschewing local expressions and reflecting a globalized point of view.

The exhibition and the catalogue essays capture a key moment in which art (as a whole) reflected on contemporary society in the late twentieth century. In his essay, Barrios seeks to explain the general meaning of the exhibition and the works chosen by the guest curators, and goes on to discuss the world’s current socio-cultural problems, such as the crisis in representational art, the collapse of ideologies, and mankind’s profoundly ingrained environmental awareness, among others. Despite the fact that this exhibition includes works chosen by five different curators, it is thematically consistent; that is, each of the chosen works represents the spirit of the times. It thus underscores the evolving ideas about “progress and happiness” that encouraged people to dream about the social changes wrought by the recent fall of the Berlin Wall and the communist concept of an Eastern Europe under the patronage of the USSR.