Venezuelan Painters - These Painters from Venezuela Create Incredible Art - Odd Nugget
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Home to many historic happenings and ancient indigenous groups, including the Timoto-Cuicas and Kalina of old, Venezuela stands today as a mecca of many diverse influences.
The nation has seen substantial involvement from European and North American forces, yet retains its own unique stock of creative pioneers to this day.
Among the many fine artists who call Venezuela home are those mentioned below. These artists produced most of their work with paint and canvas. You may be blown away by the beauty of their creations.
Martín Tovar y Tovar
Tovar took to the arts quickly and diligently pursued his studies in drawing and more with experts of the era.
Together with other artists of note, he took over a lithography business, then later started a photography outfit on his own in Spain.
Tovar would travel between Paris and his homeland of Venezuela to complete various commisions, the most notable of which included 30 historical paintings for the Legislative Federal Palace in Caracas.
Influenced by the Parisian fashions of neoclassicism and romanticism, although tempered by the colorism of Spanish masters such as Vicente López and Federico de Madrazo, Tovar y Tovar was as sure a line artist as David.
Obsessed with technical precision, he achieved a "happy adaptation of History painting as it developed in Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic France to the tropical setting," according to Picón Salas.
With Tovar y Tovar, the influence of Spain in the Venezuelan pictorial tradition came to an end and the powerful ascendancy of French art began.
biografias y vidas
Paul del Rio
Paul del Rio was a Venezuelan painter whose identity changed dramatically throughout his life and career.
He first came to fame as a revolutionary guerrilla who successfully stole a cargo ship despite the US and Royal Navy attempting to recover it, then he kidnapped and safely returned the Argentinian football player Alfredo Di Stefano as well.
Paul del Rio's entire family were stripped of their Venezuelan nationality over his revolutionary exploits, but his coy political artwork would win their nationality back in 1975.
Elsa Gramcko
Elsa Gramcko contributed quite a lot to the arts alongside her sister who focused on literature - specifically, poetry and thoughtful essays.
As a painter, Gramcko garnered praise and prizes throughout her career, including the top prize at the D'Empaire Salon held in Maracaibo, Zulia State, Venezuela. She was the first woman to ever receive the prize as well.
Elsa's work explored the nuance inherent in abstract forms, being fairly geometric when her career began and growing increasingly tachist over time.
In the words of the curator of the exhibition, Juan Carlos López, Elsa Gramcko's plastic proposal (Puerto Cabello, 1925 - Caracas, 1994) connects with the investigations and theories that the psychologist Carl Jung developed on the mystical experiences of medieval alchemists.
From there, the artist made a work that constitutes a whole spiritual journey, a self-analysis in search of the depths of her being.
Elsa Gramcko projected onto matter, as the ancient religious did, the most intimate archetypal images, the result of her search for the dwellings of the soul,' describes López.
analitica.com
Arturo Michelena
Arturo Michelena learned the art of painting from his father at first, later studying with European teachers abroad alongside the likes of Martin Tovar y Tovar.
Despite being a Venezuelan painter, Michelena was awarded a gold medal in the second class of the Salon of 1887 in Paris - a very high honor at the time.
Although Michelena's life was cut short by consumption, he completed a large variety of impressive paintings for many prominent figures, including the President Joaquín Crespo.
Read about sculptors from Perú next.
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