After attending the preview for the exhibition of painter Emilio Boggio, the Mexican poet and art critic José Juan Tablada, who lived in Caracas for some time, discusses the artist’s work, and also makes assumptions about public taste and the different ways to appreciate art; the essential values that link all the arts beyond the “isms” and the critics.

Upon his return to Venezuela from France, most critics and artists considered painter Emilio Boggio a member of the “Impressionist” trend. This description had a great impact on the founders of the landscape school at the Círculo de Bellas Artes. His exhibition in 1919 had major repercussions on other painters, but also on the Caracas public.

Tablada’s perspective on the painter Boggio is of special interest, as is his universalist vision of art. Tablada had been in the country for just a few years as a diplomat; nevertheless, he had a great deal of contact with intellectuals and artists. In this article he speaks of an aesthetic axiology; in other words, the essential values that link all the arts, in particular those that go beyond the categorization of an artist by an “ism.” In this sense, Tablada differs from the “nationalist” position on painting embraced by the founders of the Círculo de Bellas Artes, which was expressed by Leoncio Martínez [Leo] in the group’s opening address.

The Mexican journalist, diplomat, poet, and art critic José Juan Tablada (1871–1945) published an indispensable book in Venezuela that epitomizes his varied creativity and inventiveness; it includes ideographic poems based on the tradition of the Apollinaire’s Calligrammes: Li-Po y otros poemas (Caracas, 1920).