In his critical article, Enrique Viloria explains that the Venezuelan painter Henry Bermúdez (b. 1951) views woman as the essence of his work. He has created hybrid people based on the female figure, taking essential features of femininity then mixing them, reconstructing them, and transforming them with great creative imagination. The author describes Bermúdez’s work, alluding in passing to the female characteristics at the heart of his painting, so that the points he mentions say more about him than they do about the artist. Viloria stresses the iconographic aspect of the artist’s work, barely noticing the other elements in Bermúdez’s work that are also important.
These works include the most frequently mentioned “symbols” in the artist’s art, such as breasts which, according to the author, possess an erotic quality that stimulates passion; and hips (an important part of femininity). Bermúdez works with these symbols, adding bird’s heads that, somehow, suggest beautiful female figures. The male figure is also present in his paintings, seen with hybrid women, animals, and hunters in a jungle environment where Bermúdez’s “hybrid woman” plays the main role.
This is an impressionist review that has more to do with Viloria’s subjective idea of the appraisal of a painting—based on a review of the forms in terms of their faithful, or not, portrayal of reality—and that does not attempt a visual review or present an artist’s statement about this Surrealist idea.
For more information on this artist, see by Víctor Guédez “La imaginería mitológica de Henry Bermúdez” [doc. no. 1171972], and by Alexander Mosquera “Venecia abrió sus puertas al arte de Henry Bermúdez” [doc. no. 1163222].