This text, entitled “Lo inactual como posible,” by curator Lía Caraballo was written for the catalogue accompanying the exhibition of work by Emerio Darío Lunar held at the Museo de Arte de Coro in 1991. The text begins with brief descriptions of work by de Chirico and by Emerio Darío Lunar, concluding that there is an affinity between their visual languages. Caraballo reflects on Lunar’s work and the power of its images owing to the connection it forges between the imaginary and the classical [ideal]. Finally, the author mentions other elements key in Lunar’s work, such as the female figure, animals, and objects.

This essay by curator Lía Caraballo on the work of Venezuelan painter Emerio Darío Lunar (1940–1990) provides an overview of the artist’s creative process over the course of a lifetime dedicated to art. It was written on the occasion of an exhibition at the Museo de Arte de Coro in 1991. That show was not envisioned as a retrospective, but instead as an attempt to establish the year 1969 as a turning point in Lunar’s production when the concepts that would define his subsequent work were formulated. 

Caraballo’s study is enlightening as it addresses Emerio Dario Lunar in relation to master artists such as Giorgio de Chirico, El Bosco, and Balthus—all of whom engaged in an interior search and created codes in their visual languages while also expressing their interior worlds. The essay also provides an overview of Lunar’s art, focusing particularly on his recreations of masterpieces, such as Mona Lisa and Leda and the Swan by Leonardo da Vinci, which illustrates the influence of noted Renaissance artists on Lunar.

Caraballo discusses other characteristics of Lunar’s painting as well, including astonishingly still and seemingly melancholy figures. Exploring space, Lunar builds amazing settings conceived as structures of planes in perspective that would later inspire and influence Venezuelan artists, such as Julio Pacheco Rivas and Pancho Quilici. Caraballo connects Lunar’s later works with everyday objects to René Magritte’s strain of Surrealism. Finally, the theme of the female figure was central throughout Lunar’s oeuvre remaining unchanged during his creative process.