These “notes” were compiled by reporter Carlos Morantes based on an interview. In them, only the painter Armando Reverón speaks. Using simple and colloquial language, and speaking in the first person, the subjects he discusses include his biographical information, his birth, parents, travel to Spain and France, professors, his return to Venezuela, his painter friends, and his meeting with Ferdinandov and Juanita (his companion in Macuto, a town on the central coast of Venezuela). He explains his reasons for moving to the coast, and for his isolation. He also comments on some of his work, and on his method of searching for beauty and his world, in which women and femininity are of fundamental importance.

In “Visto por sí mismo,” Carlos Morantes, the reporter for El Nacional of Caracas, is not listed as author, but at the end of the text one may read: “Notes taken by our reporter Carlos Morantes.” The text is a press release, published on March 16, 1953, based on an interview with Armando Reverón (1889–1954) conducted a week before at the Sanatorio San Jorge of Dr. Báez Finol, according to the same press release. Based on the flow of the speech, it is possible that the interview was edited due to Reverón’s delicate health and that his words were penned by the journalist. The article presents Reverón in a manner similar to the one described by people who knew him: without intellectual pretensions. The text consists of seemingly simple ideas that are actually of great depth and coherence about his life. Within the literature of Reverón, this document stands out for being the only one (that has been found to date) in which Reverón speaks of himself in the first person.

The other autobiographical document on Reverón dates approximately to 1950: “Datos sobre el Pintor Armando Reverón,” and according to Alfredo Boulton, the text was dictated by Reverón himself, although in this case he spoke in third person. This second manuscript served as a source for Boulton for the biographical information he referenced in his text “Armando Reverón y la voluptuosidad en la pintura,” which would form part of his writings on the artist beginning in 1955. The text by Morantes had already appeared in 1953—two years before—and some of the data that he provided therefore coincided with those that would be offered by Boulton afterward. This lends credence to the notion that the information comes from Reverón himself, and to the accuracy of the content within “Visto por sí mismo.”

In reference to Reverón, see the essay “Reverón” by Mariano Picón-Salas [doc. no. 808902]; and the visit that Gio Ponti made to El Castillete in “Reverón, o la vita allo stato de Sogno…” [doc. no. 812211].