This is the main text from the catalogue for the retrospective on Armando Reverón, which took place at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas in 1955. In it, critic Alfredo Boulton proposes to study the artist’s work by dividing it into periods based on color: “blue” (1919–24); “white” (1925–37), his period of “voluptuousness par excellence”; and “sepia” (1937–46). These periods coincide with events in the life of Reverón and certain predominant themes. The author includes unpublished biographical details on the artist, accounts of the psychological state of the painter (serious), his elusive personality, and a warning on the difficulties of dating his work.

This text is of seminal importance because it includes, for the first time, the periodization of Reverón’s work proposed by Venezuelan intellectual Alfredo Boulton; it is organized by color that corresponds to the classification model for Picasso’s work. From that moment (until today), Boulton’s periods (blue, white, and sepia) remain the fundamental framework for those interested in studying this painter. The biographical dates on Reverón are another contribution of this text, given that they are still the principal source for chronologies and biographical notes in catalogues, didactic guides, and gallery texts. Ten years later (in 1966), Boulton published his monograph on the radical Venezuelan painter, wherein he exhaustively examines and reconsiders several of the ideas regarding the artist’s scarce theoretical training, as well as the conflict between art and madness, that Boulton himself had proposed in 1955. 

This 1955 text served as the curatorial platform for the Reverón retrospective exhibition, held at the Museo de Bellas Artes (that same year) in homage to the artist, who had died the year before. The event was without precedent, not only in the exhibition history of the artist, but also in the museology and art history of Venezuela; in only one month four hundred works were gathered, owing to press announcements and an intense public campaign. The catalogue, in which the article “Armando Reverón o la voluptuosidad en la pintura” was published, is also the first book on Reverón’s work.

Boulton’s essay has been published several times on subsequent dates: in Armando Reverón. Cuadernos de Arte del Museo Boggio,nº 2 (Caracas, 1974); in Armando Reverón: 10 ensayos (Caracas: Concejo Municipal del Distrito Federal, 1975); and in Armando Reverón. Esta luz como para magos (Caracas: Fundación Museo Armando Reverón, 1992).