In this article about Antes del paisaje, the exhibition of works by Octavio Russo (b. 1949), the Venezuelan curator Federica Palomero discusses relevant aspects of this Venezuelan artist’s work, such as geography, nature, animals, plants, and human beings inserted into the landscape created by these elements. Russo’s preparations for this exhibition, during the research he conducted in the port of Parmana, in the state of Guárico, Venezuela, involved drawing, painting, photography, collage, and installations, in an attempt to capture the landscape (or parts of it) as an overwhelming whole that envelops its inhabitants. Palomero approaches this fractional idea by means of a geographical description, paying particular attention to the characteristics of this area of the Venezuelan plains (including the climate and the fauna) in order to anchor Russo’s work firmly in reality, all the while insisting that the essential problem is not one of illustration. Russo was among the group of artists involved in the drawing boom that Venezuela experienced in the 1970s, and his work was of a decidedly expressionist style. His earliest figurative pieces gave way to visual works of art in which all references to reality were steadily eliminated. Palomero’s article therefore focuses on a moment of maturity in his evolution throughout the 1990s until 2003.