The writer of this text was Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, an art history professor and architecture critic in Germany. Here, she addresses the issue of art integration, which has been of interest to the art world for a long time. Focusing on the way architecture tries to “relate” to the other forms of art, she highlights the work of the Venezuelan architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva and proposes the Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas as a paradigm of this phenomenon. She describes the four tenets that can be used to achieve true art integration and points out several essential concepts outlined by Villanueva. Finally, the critic reviews some of the artists and artworks included in that major Caracas project, analyzing the way their work is integrated into the architectural compound.

In 1960, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy (1903–1971), art history professor, architecture critic, and wife of the Hungarian Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), wrote an essay for publication in the New York journal Arts. Four years later, she published the book Carlos Raúl Villanueva y la arquitectura de Venezuela (1964) [see the ICAA digital archive for her text “Integration of the arts/Integración de las artes" (doc. no. 1097270)]. The only relationship between the two texts is the mention of some of the most important art integration concepts, in keeping with the thinking and work of the architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva (1900–1975). The conceptual importance of this essay is largely based on the fact that Sibyl Moholy-Nagy sets forth four different modes of art integration involving architecture, painting, and sculpture. They are: (1) Structure as art; (2) Applied art; (3) Art and structure as relational entity; and (4) Art in an architectural setting. Villanueva’s vision and thinking reached such a level that he was able to use these four approaches in one “art integration project” in a completely harmonious way, a feat that came as a pleasant surprise to the writer. She goes on to refer to a basic tenet in Villanueva’s thinking, published a few years earlier on more than one occasion (in 1957, in the journal Hombre y Expresión; in 1958, in the journal Integral;and once more in 1960, in Arquitectura, Espacio y Forma). The first time he stated this belief was in his speech at the inauguration of the auditorium at the Ciudad Universitaria: the social function of the arts should be strengthened. This would only be achieved when a true coexistence of the arts was established, to the point of full integration in both collective settings and other human living spaces. Painters and sculptors would have to distance themselves from the personal and individualistic traditions generally associated with the work they do. This tenet, along with that of the “architectural-pictorial-sculptural organism,” also mentioned in the article, contributed to Villanueva’s conceptual foundation when he set out to execute his integrated work.

[For an essay by Villanueva in which he reviews Latin American artists and movements that have expressed various elements of art integration in their work, see “La síntesis de las Artes” (doc. no. 864335)].