This fifth and final issue of Los Disidentes magazine, also known as the “Manifiesto del NO” [NO Manifesto] in Venezuela, or as the “Manifiesto de los Disidentes,”summarized all that the [group] rejected of Venezuelan culture, which had already been presented before in the five issues of their magazine. Almost none expound upon the positive premises of their group [what they were in favor of]; on the contrary, they display and incite a “destructive” attitude that is contrary to the values of traditional culture. This text is not an exception in attacking all the features of the cultural society of the nation that, in their understanding, were perpetuating the stagnant nature of its structure: museums, official art, art criticism, education, folklore, and even the public itself, including the media. They present a general “NO,” the repetition of which is underscored by their radical message, both elemental and direct, pertinent to journalism genre.
The cover of this fifth edition of Los Disidentes magazine lists the members who were then active; painters Pascual Navarro, Alejandro Otero, Mateo Manaure, Luis Guevara Moreno, Carlos González Bogen, Narciso Debourg, Perán Erminy, Rubén Núñez, Dora Hersen, Aimée Battisitini, as well as the ballerina Belén Núñez, philosophy student J.R. Guillent Pérez, filmmaker César Enríquez, poet Rafael Zapata, journalist Bernardo Chataing and ceramic artist Miguel Arroyo. The young painters Régulo Pérez, Genaro Moreno and Omar Carreño are also included.
Los Disidentes was a group created in Paris in 1950, by Venezuelan artists and writers who lived in the city between 1945 and 1951. From the French capital, they fought against the official education imparted by the Escuela de Artes Plásticas of Caracas, whose foundations were in landscape and nativism. Doing honor to their name, Los Disidentes sought to ensure a renewal of traditional and academic art through the assimilation of the tenets of European abstraction. Among its members were the painters: Alejandro Otero (1921–90), Mateo Manaure, Pascual Navarro, Luis Guevara Moreno, Carlos González Bogen, Narciso Debourg, Perán Erminy, Rubén Núñez, Dora Hersen, Aimée Battistini, as well as philosophy student, J. R. Guillent Pérez. These were later joined by other national artists (Armando Barrios, Miguel Arroyo, Oswaldo Vigas, Omar Carreño, Alirio Oramas and Régulo Pérez). The group published an eponymous magazine, Los Disidentes, which produced five issues, and served as their main dissemination medium for their ideas. [For other texts on this group, see the following documents in the ICAA digital archive: by Otero, “Del arte abstracto”, [On abstract art] (doc. no. 813611), (“Las "placas al mérito" y la juventud” [Badges of Honor and Youth] (doc. no 813429) and (“Mateo Manaure en la pintura : Un joven pintor venezolano, en viaje hacia París” [Mateo Manaure on painting: a young Venezuelan painter en route to Paris] (doc. no. 813639); by González Bogen (“La escuela "de los paisajistas" de Caracas” [The school “of the landscapists” of Caracas] (doc. no. 813695 and “"De nuevo" Los Disidentes” [What’s New Los Disidentes], (doc. no. 813667); by Manaure (“Carlos González Bogen: Pintor” [Carlos González Bogen::Painter] (doc. no. 813583); by Debourg (“En torno a la pintura de hoy” [On Today’s Painting], (doc. no. 813597); and by Guillent Pérez both “Lo latinoamericano y lo occidental [Parte I]” [Latin American and Western Part I], (doc. no. 813723 and “Lo latinoamericano y lo occidental: (Continuación)” [Latin American and Western: (A continuation)], (doc. no. 813478)].
