Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this essay, which appeared in the catalogue for Veinte disecciones (Caracas: Museo de Bellas Artes, 1982), the exhibition of works by Roberto Obregón, the researcher Susana Benko reflects on cultural symbols, conventions, and codes and the [...]

In the design ¿Y por qué no?, the artist Antonieta Sosa describes the action planned in detail. As she states it, this work consists of placing wine glasses on different parts of her body so that they will drop and break. Added to the sound of [...]

Roberto Guevara reviewed Gego’s Reticulárea (1969) when it was first installed at the Museo de Bellas Artes [Museum of Fine Arts] in Caracas. He mentions the artist’s use of space within the Reticulárea, which acquires a new environmental [...]

This text written by the art critic Roberto Guevara is the preface to the catalogue for the exhibition Pinturas, which exhibited work by the French artist Marcel Floris, who had been living in Caracas since 1950. The exhibition was held at the Museo [...]

In this brief prologue to the catalogue of his exhibition Nedo: Reversámbitos held at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas in 1973, Italian-born Venezuelan designer and artist Nedo [Mion Ferrario] describes his experience of space in terms of [...]

This essay by Pedro León Castro appeared in the catalogue for his exhibition of paintings at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas in 1949. Following a brief introductory paragraph, in which he explains that the exhibition is a reflection of his [...]

The researcher Victoria de Stefano wrote the introduction to a catalogue for the 1985 exhibition Nenias by the graphic designer Gerd Leufert at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. She provides an overview of the artist’s work, in contrast with [...]

The text by Brazilian author Alberto Da Costa e Silva for the exhibition “9 grabadores del Brasil” [Nine Engravers of Brazil] (Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, 1968) presents an expansive view of the history and evolution of engraving in the [...]

In this fifth and last issue of Los Disidentes [The Dissidents] (Paris, 1950) magazine, which states as its purpose to “severely” attack the cultural reality of Venezuela, which [the group] describes as “false,” and with the intention of [...]

This is Marta Traba’s critical review of the exhibition of silkscreen prints by Susy Iglicki at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. Traba discusses the Venezuelan artist’s use of space, color, planes, and volumes, while referring to her [...]

This article appeared on the Venezuelan magazine Imagen, focusing on the opening of 1x9, a silkscreen exhibition by the modernist abstract artist Mercedes Pardo, held at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. After a brief introduction with [...]

In this critical essay, Roberto Guevara reviews Elsa Gramcko’s geometric abstraction work. Guevara discusses the importance of the abstract movement (to which he belongs) in Venezuela in the 1950s, which he sees as a new and vigorous expression of [...]

The journalist Pablo Villamizar interviews the painter Alirio Palacios on the occasion of the opening of the latter’s exhibition Xilografías y concretografías. Grabado 1994–1999 at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. The 1999 exhibition [...]

In March 1983, members of the Research Department of the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas interviewed the painter Ivan Petrovszky about his exhibition at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC (that same year). By way of introduction, the [...]

In this text, the Venezuelan art critic Roberto Guevara analyzes the visual art of Spanish-born artist Ángel Luque. He relates the new chromatic experimentations made by the artist to works by such artists as Herbin, Manessier, Picasso, and the [...]

This text by Federica Palomero was written for Arte de América, the exhibition she curated in 1988 on the occasion of the anniversary of the founding of the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. The text describes the origins of the collection of Inter- [...]

Poet Guillermo Alfredo Cook asserts that, insofar as Gabriel Bracho’s work has rendered painting literary, it has mistaken the essence of art, reducing it to political slogans and ideological propaganda. He describes Bracho’s painting as a [...]

The curator Iris Peruga discusses the structure and content of the collection of works at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. She names artists and works, and links them to various key moments in the museum’s history. In her essay she talks about [...]

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 [...]

The journalist Lenelina Delgado interviews the Venezuelan painter Oswaldo Vigas on the occasion of the exhibition of the latter’s tapestries at the MBA (Museo de Bellas Artes) in Caracas. During the course of the conversation, they discuss how the [...]

In twelve aphorisms, the Venezuelan artist Javier Téllez lists his thoughts about the qualities and possible states of objects—either autonomous or in groups, virgin or used—and makes a number of suggestions concerning how people should behave [...]

This essay by the Venezuelan researcher José Luis Guevara was published in the catalogue for the exhibition Un lector, algunos diseñadores gráficos, una década, at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. Guevara reviews the work of six Venezuelan [...]

In this essay about the exhibition of paintings by the Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamín at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, Alejandro Otero discusses the question of influences in art and originality. Following a detailed analysis of many [...]

Juan Calzadilla begins his critical essay by relating a crisis in geometric abstraction to the exploration of Informalism by Omar Carreño. Calzadilla reflects on Carreño’s embrace of the gestural and material aspects of the trend in his paintings [...]

José Ratto Ciarlo publishes in 1943 his conversation in tandem with the Chilean artist Marco Bontà Costa and Mercedes Pardo during the opening of the exhibition of the former’s Venezuelan landscapes at the Museo de Bellas Artes in [...]

Curator and art critic Élida Román divides her presentation into two parts. She first tries to define not only the objective of art criticism but also to identify the craft and reach of art critics.  Román then presents a diagnosis on the [...]

This anonymous text provides a detailed review of the rooms and halls of the Museo de Bellas Artes (Caracas) containing the works of the XVIII Salón Oficial de Arte Venezolano (1957). The works, according to the author, were grouped in the space by [...]

This essay by Venezuelan writer Oswaldo Trejo analyzes the art of Elsa Gramcko. It describes a number of characteristics of the Venezuelan artist’s creative world, specifically how she uses matter as the defining “content” of her work. Trejo [...]

In this essay, the critic Juan Calzadilla discusses the exploration of Informalist abstract movements by Venezuelan artist Elsa Gramcko, who was in search of new “textures” with which to express her ideas in physical form. Calzadilla describes [...]

Federica Palomero launches into this essay with a brief history of the MBA (Museo de Bellas Artes) in Caracas, and the steady growth of the Museum’s Collection of Latin American Art. Palomero posits that one can see the history of Latin American [...]

In this essay, the well-known critic Roberto Guevara discusses the evolution in the Chinese-Venezuelan visual artist Francisco “Chino” Hung’s style. Guevara bases his remarks on a review of the artist’s works from the early 1960s until the [...]

In 1949, the journalist José Ratto-Ciarlo outlined the exhibition of [work] by Alejandro Otero at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. The beginning of the outline and the two first subtitles (“Comprensión de Otero” and “La parte por el todo [...]

The critic Roberto Guevara suggests that the contrast in the Czech-born Venezuelan artist Marietta Berman’s two- and three-dimensional pieces appropriates space in her highly personal work. Guevara notes that the two-dimensional pieces in the [...]

In this text, journalist Héctor Mujica examines the artistic qualities of painter Gabriel Bracho in the exhibition of the artist’s work held at the Museo de Bellas Artes of Caracas in 1951. Mujica describes Bracho’s work as “combat painting [...]

In his review of the exhibition “Paisaje Venezolano” held at the Museo de Bellas Artes in August 1942, critic Enrique Planchart underscores the importance of French-Venezuelan painter Emilio Boggio to the national art scene. Planchart [...]

In the first part of his extensive review of the Exposición del Paisaje Venezolano, which took place in 1942 at the Museo de Bellas Artes of Caracas, Enrique Planchart establishes a chronological framework that distinguishes the pioneers (he calls [...]

In the second part of his extensive review of the Exposición del Paisaje Venezolano, which took place in 1942 at the Museo de Bellas Artes of Caracas, Enrique Planchart analyzes some of the twentieth-century painters of his country, each of which he [...]

The critic Juan Calzadilla introduces the exhibition of prints by Luis Chacón at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, discussing the lack of a printmaking tradition and wondering what the artist might do to remedy the void in training opportunities [...]

In this essay, Marco Rodríguez del Camino mentions all the exhibitions that the German-born Venezuelan artist Luisa Richter has presented during the course of her career, while focusing on the issue of composition, which is the central theme of the [...]

The writer Ida Gramcko examines Gego’s Dibujos sin Papel [Drawings without Paper] and reviews them from a poetic perspective. Gramcko claims that, although they are aerial, cosmic works, Gego’s Dibujos sin Papel are metaphors for terrestrial [...]

In this essay, the curator Katherine Chacón writes about the artist Javier Téllez. She refers to the conceptual lucidity of his work which, in her opinion, stands out among other examples of contemporary Venezuelan art. Chacón reviews the artist [...]

In his presentation, the theorist and critic Juan Acha—whose central theme is on the analysis of the processes of artistic work and its technical divisions—makes a cursory historical overview on the topic before addressing the case of Latin [...]

In this critical review, the Venezuelan writer Guillermo Meneses reviews the exhibition of works by the Venezuelan painter Alejandro Otero [Rodríguez] that opened on January 30, 1949 at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. Otero was living in Paris [...]

In this article, the critic Roberto Guevara reviews the works presented by the artist Mario Abreu at the exhibition Objetos Mágicos (Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, 1965). Guevara states that Abreu’s magical objects are among the most important [...]

Enrique Buenaventura reviews and critiques Gabriel Bracho’s first exhibition at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. The Colombian playwright identifies the artist as a realist painter who has not yet reached maturity, which is the reason why the [...]

In this article, the critic Roberto Guevara reviews Nenias, the exhibition of works by the artist and graphic designer Gerd Leufert, who lived in Venezuela, at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. Guevara salutes the originality of Leufert’s work [...]

The press release refers to the first exhibition of the work of Venezuelan artist Gabriel Bracho at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. The opening featured a large crowd from various segments of society. It reviews the great success in support and [...]

In this essay, the curator Carmen Hernández reviews Cas(A)nto, the multimedia installation by Antonieta Sosa at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas in 2000. Hernández discusses the artist’s career since her constructive painting in the 1960s [...]

Carlos Díaz Sosa interviewed Venezuelan artist Luis Chacón on the occasion of the exhibition New International Gravure Group, which featured Chacón’s work, held at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. The article points out that Chacón was the [...]

Guillermo Meneses, the Venezuelan writer, introduces Mary Brandt’s exhibition at the MBA (Museo de Bellas Artes) in Caracas. Meneses describes Brandt’s early years at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Caracas, and mentions that her father, [...]