Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Mara Comerlati writes a press article about the modernist painter Mercedes Pardo in El Nacional. The exhibition involves her most recent work (twelve paintings and twenty silkscreens), at the Galería Adler/Castillo in Caracas. The subheading [...]

In this article for The Daily Journal, Baiba Pecins writes about Mercedes Pardo on the occasion of the exhibition of her work at the GAN (Galería de Arte Nacional) in Caracas. The article is introduced by observations on luminosity and [...]

In this 1979 article in El Nacional, María Josefa Pérez interviews Mercedes Pardo regarding her retrospective exhibition Color: piel, presencia meditada. Mercedes Pardo Exposición antológica at the GAN ( [...]

In this 1991 article written for El Universal, María Ramírez Ribes presents the Mercedes Pardo retrospective Moradas del color, on view at the GAN (Galeria de Arte Nacional) in Caracas. The works on show span from 1941 to 1991 and [...]

This article appeared in El Nacional the day of the opening of Obra gráfica de Mercedes Pardo at the Galería Los Espacios Cálidos in Caracas. The show was organized in tandem by the Ateneo de Caracas and the GAN (Galería [...]

This article, published in El Nacional in February 1995, was written on the occasion of the closure of Obra Grafica de Mercedes Pardo at the Galería de los Espacios Cálidos del Ateneo de Caracas. The show was co-organized by the GAN ( [...]

This article was published in El Nacional (Caracas, August 11, 1996), on the day of the opening of Mercedes en el Museo Sacro. Obras recientes de Mercedes Pardo in this institution. This anonymous text points to a dual reading of the exhibition&rsquo [...]

Yasmin Monsalve writes this article for El Globo, Caracas, for the upcoming opening of an exhibition of Mercedes Pardo in Galeria del Sacro. Fourteen paintings and ten screenprints are shown after her five years of silence. The works are said to be [...]

Gustavo Jaén writes this article for the Caracas newspaper El Universal, on the occasion of the exhibition of Mercedes Pardo’s work at the Museo Sacro. By introducing the significance of color in her work—with references to its [...]

This article by Miriam Freilich was written on the occasion of the retrospective Mercedes Pardo: Moradas del Color, held at GAN (Galeria de Arte Nacional) in Caracas and covering fifty years of her production through 258 artworks. The author [...]

In this catalogue exhibition essay for the GAN (Galería de Arte Nacional) in Caracas, Humberto Mata discusses the work of the Venezuelan modernist Mercedes Pardo. The writer personifies his text describing his brief encounters with the painter [...]

Maritza Jiménez  interviews Luis Alfredo López Méndez, the Venezuelan artist, who talks about the countries he has lived in since being expelled from Venezuela by dictator Juan Vicente Gómez [1908-15, 1922-35], and the work he pursued to survive [...]

The critic Juan Carlos Palenzuela reviews the acquisition by the Galería de Arte Nacional (GAN) of forty Leoncio Martínez drawings and caricatures. In addition to being a draftsman and caricaturist, this artist was also a poet and critic. The [...]

The Venezuelan artist Asdrúbal Colmenárez wrote about his own installation, Preludio 7, fuga siete, on exhibition at the Galería de Arte Nacional (1991). He presents the objective of the installation, which is intended to raise viewer awareness of [...]

In this article, the critic Roberto Guevara reflects on Venezuelan artist Mary Brandt’s work on account of the posthumous exhibition organized by the GAN (Galería de Arte Nacional) in Caracas. For Guevara, painting by this artist “experienced [...]

This curatorial text by William Niño Araque reviews the landscape genre in Venezuela starting with an early twentieth-century trend called “national landscape” and the approaches favored by the Círculo de Bellas Artes. The writer concludes his [...]

Curator Luis Ángel Duque describes each of the installations for the show Venezuela, nuevas cartografias y cosmogonías [Venezuela, New Cartographies and Cosmogonies] held at the Galería de Arte Nacional in Caracas. He describes the content, [...]

In this essay for the exhibition Venezuela, nuevas cartografías y cosmogonías [Venezuela, New Cartographies and Cosmogonies] (Caracas, Galería de Arte Nacional, 1995), curator Luis Ángel Duque offers a brief introduction to the serious problems [...]

María Elena Ramos analyzes Gego’s work Reticulárea as a metaphor of nature. As the curator sees it, Reticulárea grows incessantly just as organic forms do, open to the space around it. Like other natural forms, it maintains [...]

Roberto Montero Castro reviews Gego’s exhibition based on his conversation with the artist in the room where her Reticulárea (1969) was installed for a group show at the Galería de Arte Nacional [National Art Gallery] (GAN, 1977). He describes [...]

A salon sheet, with neither author nor date, signed by the GAN (Galería de Arte Nacional) [National Art Gallery], published (presumably) in connection with the permanent installation of Gego’s Reticulárea (1969), after her death, by a team of [...]

In “Armando Barrios,” his essay about the Venezuelan artist, the critic Roberto Guevara reviews Armando Barrios. Retrospectiva, the exhibition presented at the Galería de Arte Nacional from 1977 through 1978. Guevara reviews the exhibition and [...]

This essay by Roberto Guevara was published in the catalogue for the exhibition of works by Adrián Pujol at the Galería de Arte Nacional de Caracas in November 1995. Guevara analyzes Pujol’s work, and discusses the Majorca-born Venezuelan painter [...]

This essay by Víctor Guédez entitled “Manuel Quintana Castillo: Una visión retrospectiva” was featured in the catalogue for the exhibition La piel del tiempo: Manuel Quintana Castillo, held at the Fundación Galería de Arte Nacional in 2002. [...]

The journalist Miriam Delgado interviews the Venezuelan engraver Gladys Meneses. During the course of the conversation, Meneses talks about an important change in her approach to her art. She explains that she decided to replace paper with other [...]

The journalist Edgar Alfonzo Sierra interviews the Venezuelan visual artist Magdalena Fernández on the occasion of Dimensiones variables, her exhibitionat the Galería de Arte Nacional. He describes her as a “weaver of spaces” and describes her [...]

In his essay about Elsa Gramcko’s life, the curator Juan Carlos López Quintero provides a chronological account of her work; he reviews most of her creations and lays out a detailed timeline of her various creative periods. He mentions the [...]

In this document, the communicator Marco Antonio Ettedgui outlines his conceptual idea behind “Feliz cumpleaños, Marco Antonio,” an informative and body art event that he staged at the GAN (Galería de Arte Nacional), in Caracas, on December 14 [...]

In her review, Maritza Jiménez announces that ten years after it was originally presented in Venezuela, Gego’s Reticulárea (1969) would be permanently installed in one of the new rooms at the GAN (Galería de Arte Nacional) [National Art Gallery [...]

Venezuelan journalist Mara Comerlati interviews Gego about the exhibition of watercolors that will be held at the Galería de Arte Nacional (GAN) in Caracas in August 1982. She also provides information about the most important moments in Gego’s [...]

Venezuelan journalist Lenelina Delgado reports on an exhibition of watercolors by Gego that will be held at the Galería de Arte Nacional (GAN) in Caracas. Delgado provides an overview of Gego’s career, describing her as the most coherent artist [...]

In this brief story published in the Caracas-based newspaper El Nacional in 1981, Venezuelan author Salvador Garmendia recounts the experience of an inhabitant of that city who manages to escape the chaos of its polluted streets with their piles of [...]

This review, dated March 29, 1981, is based on a visit made by some journalists from the “Caracas a Diario” supplement to the newspaper Diario de Caracas to Gego, and to view her work in gallery four of the Galería de Arte Nacional (GAN) in [...]

In this essay on the Venezuelan painter and engraver Mercedes Pardo, Elizabeth Schon establishes the different phases “that were linked together through an intimate perseverance” in the artist’s career. She comments on and analyzes the [...]

Juan Acha presents his essay on the object and installation art Dorado [Golden] by Venezuelan conceptual artist Pedro Terán, which was exhibited in the Espacio Alterno at the Galeria de Arte Nacional in Caracas (1983). He highlights Terán’s [...]

In this text, Bélgica Rodríguez describes the creation of the Taller de Artistas Gráficos Asociados (TAGA). She explains that it was conceived as a workspace where printmakers could produce their projects. Rodríguez mentions those responsible for [...]

In the first section of Sí y No, her column in the Caracas newspaper El Nacional, the journalist Margarita D’Amico publishes some of the thoughts on “today’s art” expressed by Claudio Perna, the photographer and conceptual artist. Perna [...]

Venezuelan journalist Lenelina Delgado interviews Jacobo Borges on his show, La Comunión. The artist explains that the works in La Comunión were conceptually based on a photograph. He states that by means of the ritual nature of the works in the [...]

This article, written by Elsa Flores for Fotografía anónima en Venezuela—the exhibition organized by Claudio Perna at the GAN (Galería de Arte Nacional) in 1979—is divided into three parts. In the first part, Flores discusses the origins of [...]

In this article María Elena Ramos reviews the La Comunión series by the Venezuelan painter Jacobo Borges, which she finds to be a synthesis of the main ideas he had explored in earlier works, such as El Espectáculo (Ha comenzado el espectáculo, [...]

In this article, Elsa Flores comments on the performances of a group of “action-language artists” gathered by the actor, Marco Antonio Ettedgui, who is also a performance artist. Together, they designed and presented their plans at the Galería [...]

This document is an article by artist Carlos Zerpa in which he critiques the opinions historian Mariana Figarella offered in her essay “Los años ochenta. Panorama de una década” on the evolution of his career, the content of his work, and his [...]

In this gallery text, Venezuelan artist Antonieta Sosa describes the action Del Cuerpo al Vacío [From My Body to the Void], which was structured into three interrelated parts. Part I, performed in the courtyard of the Galería de Arte Nacional (GAN [...]

Aurora Blyde interviews Sammy Cucher during the exhibition CCS-10. Arte venezolano actual (Caracas: Fundación Galería de Arte Nacional, 1993). Cucher discusses the various ways in which his work addresses social issues; he explains how he thinks [...]

This text, written on behalf of the Galería de Arte Nacional (GAN) in Caracas, introduces Gego’s environmental work Reticulárea (1969), identified as a constant presence that was also capable of variation. While this was a unique work of art, [...]

In an attempt at historical reconstruction, and due to the intense political situation in Venezuela (between 1974 and 1978), art critic Roberto Montero Castro attempts to detect the presence of “the Venezuelan identity” in certain artistic [...]