This article, published in the Caracas newspaper El Nacional, announces the upcoming opening of the exhibition 1x9, serigrafia del color by the Venezuelan abstract painter Mercedes Pardo, held at the Museo de Bellas Artes in the capital city. The unknown author defines color research as a fundamental feature of Pardo’s work and refers to her screenprints on formica in the show as “vibrations.” The artist clarifies that the term “vibration” in reference to her paintings should not be used in the kinetic sense of a visual, optical vibration but as an emotional reaction toward color. The article refers to the text that pioneer of Venezuelan abstraction Alejandro Otero, the artist’s husband, wrote for the exhibition catalogue. Otero discusses Pardo’s work through detailed visual analyses and technical comments, stressing that what is shown at the Museo de Bellas Artes embodies the “affirmation, continuity, and development of Venezuelan painting.”

This article appeared on the Art page of El Nacional on November 6, 1969, three days ahead of the opening of 1x9 serigrafia del color in Caracas. The title of this exhibition of Mercedes Pardo (1921–2005) is duly explained in the article by both Pardo and Alejandro Otero (1921–1990). The author (anonymous) reports Pardo’s explanation of her works as “nine harmonious and combinable modules,” stating that although the nine screenprints form a coherent group if combined, they equally maintain their own autonomy as separate modules. In the text by Otero, he explains that the nine graphic works involve the decomposition of a square by keeping the “integrity of the initial form” even as separate works. An important contribution involves his detailed visual analyses and comments on Pardo’s chromatic approach; Otero also focuses on the support of these works, a white formica square on wooden frame, in addition to the serigraphic technique with a denser finish, compared to screenprints on paper, claiming that Pardo’s invention of harmonious relations is a unique contribution to this medium.

Mercedes Pardo was said to object to the use of the term “vibration” in the kinetic sense. Cinetismo at this time was benefitting from a common place: public and institutional popularity identifying it as the key modernist movement in Venezuela. The main exponents of the trend—Otero, Carlos Cruz-Diez (1923–2019) and Jesús Rafael Soto (1923–2005)—received several commissions for public works. While “vibrations” in Venezuelan Kineticism involve research on the physiology of vision and on the instability of both picture plane and three-dimensional surfaces, Pardo rightly objects to the use of this term in a visual sense to be applied for her work. Pardo’s research on color and on the three-dimensional potentials of a flat picture plane are in fact more in line with research on interaction of color and on the chromatic effect on viewers; therefore, her explanation of “vibrations” as “emotional,” and not merely visual, qualities is fully justified. There is, however, a point in common with the kineticists in Pardo’s perceived responsibility towards the spectator and in her aim to break the barriers between artwork and viewer.

[For the catalogue reproduction of the text by Otero cited in this article, see in the ICAA Digital Archive his essay “Mercedes Pardo: color de la serigrafía” (doc. no. 1143176). For further reading on this exhibition, see Margarita D’Amico, “Mercedes Pardo: 1 x 9” (doc. no. 1155959) as well as Roberto Guevara, “Color y módulos en Mercedes Pardo” (doc. no. 1155991).]