Oswaldo Vigas Passion for creation
Galería CAF, Caracas, Venezuela
March, 2007

"Oswaldo Vigas is one of the true inventors of Latin American art. (...) He belongs to the group of artists that have contributed to keep alive the natural cultural trends of the continent, which are, as he defined them ... of prelogical, magical, mythological and antirationalist character. (...) Vigas has been able to perform an original synthesis, ie, personal, between these natural preserved tendencies and the most creative visual researches of modernity ...”

This conclusive quote from French critic Jean Clarence Lambert contained in the catalog of the retrospective: Vigas 1952-1993 at the Museum La Monnaie de Paris (1993) summarizes the presence of this essential artist of genuine American lineage in the international plastic world.

The call for artistic creation begins in Valencia, his hometown, where at an early age is already worthy of significant recognition. Being very young, he received the National Prize of Plastic Arts and starts to get linked with prominent artists from the avant-garde of the mid-twentieth century in Venezuela and France, moving to Paris in the year 1952.

The profound love for his country impels him return to Venezuela in 1964. Since then, he has been dedicated to build an extensive work that has a strong expression and that today appears as an essential reference of Latin American plastic enigma.

The Corporación Andina de Fomento (Andean Development Corporation) gathers in its art gallery a sample that evidences briefly, the passionate depth of the talent of this Venezuelan artist whose long artistic path continues to unfold with a daily and unlimited dedication. Oswaldo Vigas, Passion for creation is the most accurate title for an exhibition that seeks to pay tribute to this master of Latin American art, whose work embraces the roots of our history and our geography.

Office of external relations

Corporación Andina de Fomento

OSWALDO VIGAS, Passion for creation

In this sample we have given emphasis to the passion of a master for his artistic creation. We did not want to make a conservatorship that neither has as reference, theoretical approaches nor pictorial analysis of trends, but, to try to convey the feeling of the artist expressing in an informal conversation, his relationship with the creative activity and some of his life experiences.

The work of Oswaldo Vigas, always immense, intense and relentless, has been captured on the most diverse and unusual media. We consider of great interest to share what a master like Vigas has to say about that need to create which seems to possess him.

Conversation with Vigas

-How did your first inclination towards plastic manifested?

In elementary school I participated in theater, in plays that were mostly comedies and which always had a lack of atmosphere. Because they always saw me drawing, they asked me to collaborate in the realization of the backdrops, so my first works were gouaches on paper and oils that I painted on pieces of canvas of an old cot.

-When was your first exhibition?

In 1942 I sent illustrations made for some poems by Arthur Machado, Maria Clemencia Camaran and others to the First Salon of Illustrated Poems at the Ateneo de Valencia. One day they called me to go in order to receive the first prize. I was sitting at the last row and when they called my name I stood up and start walking while I heard people mumbling because I still was wearing shorts.

-When did you sell your first work?

In 1942, Dr. Jorge Lizarraga bought me two works, I seem to remember that those works were Flor y Formas and La iglesia de Guacara, which were semi-abstract paintings with surreal elements.

-What was the most important influence in your creative activity?

I think the great masters that I found later in the valuable books of Luis Eduardo Chavez’ library in Valencia. But I had a lot of work done in small formats. The first things that I drew and painted were absolutely spontaneous ... people said that I did not know how to paint because what I did was unlike anything they have seen...

After having painted for years in an intuitive way, I made my own academy, drawing male and female nudes, faces, bodies, self-portraits, portraits of my mother, brothers and of course landscapes and still lifes.

When I arrived in Paris, I enrolled in the School of Fine Arts, in the studio of lithography and etching directed by Marcel Jaudon and then at the studio of Stanley William Haiter.

-By which means and at what times do you express more freely?

Drawing, and when I feel I am not overwhelm by responsibilities, which occurs particularly during my travels.

In those moments I do drawings on any support: paper tablecloths, napkins, subway tickets, newspapers...

In the brittle material there is no retention, the worst material has the advantage that it does not awaken psychological resistance in the artist, contrary to the new papers, that offer resistance because it is a clean white surface that one feels can be spoiled.

However, in a piece of newspaper you do not have that problem, one can draw on it as you want and sometimes good things come out, and it also has the advantage that fungi does not grow it because of the inks you use, although it can become yellow. Famous painters have made beautiful oil paintings on newsprint and stick them later on the canvas.

Some of the drawings that I make spontaneously are later reused for the paintings, prints, sculptures and ceramics. I do not believe in "evolution" in art, I have never had a continuous line; I go forward and then back, and from one side to the other...

-How is a day in the life of Vigas?

I hate routine and I do not believe in discipline or inspiration because I never expect the inspiration to do something, things are done with work and not with inspiration.

I do not paint every day, I only paint when I can and when I am in the mood, and when I am not   something else like cooking, for example.

I get up as late as possible, because the problems start when you get out of bed ... everything gets complicated after you get up. I love to sleep, I think it's the best you have. I dream, but not too much and I only remember the momentous dreams. All the day is the same at the beginning and looks like the same at the end. But there is no rule; the only rule is that there are no rules, there is no discipline ever. Work is not unpleasant because it is libidinal, it is the libido that intervenes and ends up producing pleasure, even when you suffer, and it is something very enjoyable.

-I see you like to cook and that you are preparing bitter orange marmalade? How did you learn to do it?

Like painting, making it, working it, the same process as painting which is learnt by hard work.

-How has been the relationship with the artists with whom you have shared?

When I arrived in Caracas, in 1948, I looked for a place to live near the Beaux Arts School and the University. I stayed at a pension at the corner of Fe to Santa Barbara, where Humberto Jaimes Sánchez, Angel Hurtado, Omar Carreño, Victor Valera and Genaro Moreno lived. They all became my first friends in Caracas.

I have had very dear friends. Angel Hurtado, Humberto Sanchez Jaimes and me did a trio at the Free Art Workshop, where I was taken by its director Alirio Oramas. Mario Abreu, Luis Guevara Moreno, Régulo Pérez and others were also there.

-What have been the most important moments in your artistic life?

In 1951 I graduated from medical school and the following year I received the National Prize of Plastic Arts, the Boulton and the Arturo Michelena Award.

-We know you met great artists during the time you lived in Paris. Who do you remember most?

Max Ernst, Fernand Leger, Jean Arp, Alberto Magnelli, Baltasar Lobo, Alfred Mannessier, Jean Dewasne, Victor Vasarely, some of which, incidentally, were presented to me by my dear and admired friend, architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva.

As for Picasso, it was the Venezuelan pianist Humberto Castillo Suarez who took me to meet him in 1955 to his house La Californie in Cannes. It was a human encounter of extraordinary empathy, beyond any artistic or pictorial account. He treated me like a colleague; he wanted to see my work and asked my opinion about what he was painting and about his work. It was an exceptional moment in my life. I saw him three continuous days and when we parted the two started to cry. He made me promise to return, which I could never do for reasons too numerous to explain here.

-And Reverón?

I met him before I left Venezuela on a visit that some friends in the company Free Art Workshop and Rafael Lopez Pedraza made to him. I remember he put his fingers in my ears telling me I had to get out the bugs that I could have in my head, those same bugs that tormented him. Angel Hurtado took some pictures of that meeting.

-In this conversation we have had during these days I have discovered that you write poetry. When did you start writing it?

Since I was a teenager I've always written many essays, newspaper articles, poetry and even theatrical plays.

-Well master, the only thing you lack is singing or playing a musical instrument...

But I'm a music lover; I like music a lot and enjoy it very much. As a child I began to study piano at the Ateneo de Valencia, but I quit because I did not have the instrument at home.

My favorite composer is Chopin, but I love Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky...

Life has brought me close to great musicians like Jean Pierre Rampal, Narciso Yepes, Byron Janis, Yoyo Ma, Henryck Szeryng, Maurice Hasson my friend, not to mention Krzysztof Penderecki with whom I maintain a close relationship. Krzysztof began in 1987 in my workshop a “Quartet for Oswaldo ", after seeing my series of oil paintings of the crucifixion.

This simple and emotional conversation, with spontaneous questions and answers in the artist's house went quietly, surrounded by the fascinating atmosphere of his studio, full of smells and colors, where we made the selection of the works presented in this exhibition.

A life beside Vigas

During the days of our visit to the master, a presence accompanied us relentlessly. Attentive and friendly, Janine Castes, French, born in Montauban –land of Ingres and Bourdelle-, Vigas’ wife since 1963 and mother of his only son, Lorenzo, is knowledgeable like no one of Vigas’ work. Enthusiastic and willing to generously offer support, she accepted for the first time to answer some questions about her life with Vigas.

-How did you meet Vigas?

Almost upon his arrival in France, a few months later, at the same time I met the Venezuelan group at a meeting about Venezuelan folklore organized by Les Jeunesses Musicales of Ranee. I remember particularly Humberto Jaimes, Angel Hurtado, Jesus Soto and Elbano Mendez Osuna. It was undoubtedly the "coup de foudre", but I was very young and many things happened before I became "Vigas". That's a long story.

-What was the first Vigas ‘work you saw?

I do not remember. At that time (and still) I was more interested in him than on his works...

-How is life next to a master like Vigas?

Enriching and challenging at the same time. ¡This would also be a long story! ... But to make it short I can tell you that beauty makes us forget the difficulties.

-How do you support him?

Admiring him, that is the magic word. Admiring everything he does and, especially, the "newborn", which can be painting, sculpture, drawing, poem or something else. Then, when something else is born, the critics arise. Oswaldo often says that ¡I am the worst (or best) critic!

-How does Vigas create?

For him it is like breathing; he creates at all times and in all circumstances. But it tends to speed up in exceptional moments for example robberies and duels, also traveling and above all, in every moment of adversity.

-What have been your best and worst moments?

Lorenzo, naturally, has provided us both. Then, for good moments I would say the great exhibitions (the small exhibitions too), the recognitions, the Awards. And, for bad moments, especially the diseases we have suffered. By the way, it sometimes comes to mind the idea of writing something about our life largely devoted to the significance of the work.

"... Vigas has his own mystery, his own lines, and his own colors. He paints with passionate depth, and torn sensitivity. Through modern lines he searches for the oldest expression of our land. (...) I am among those who believe in the future of this young Venezuelan artist."

Miguel Otero Silva, 1952

"Oswaldo Vigas is one of the few Venezuelan artists who paint from an individuality where no influences by schools or eras appear."

Rafael López Pedraza, 2007

"...I have never been neither rigorously abstract nor rigorously figurative. What I have always tried to be is rigorously Oswaldo Vigas..."

O.V., 1958

"...Telluric themes, spooky affairs resume every day in Vigas’ painting, the retrospective odyssey of man in America searching for his origins..."

Aquiles Nazoa, 1970

"...Vigas belongs to a noble contemporary lineage... in which I put all the courageous Latin American artists that faithfully followed a point of view, without accepting impositions from outside by the pressure of fashion or the urgency of change."

Marta Traba, 1973

"...I am interested in revitalizing the archaic art as the most vital part of contemporary art. To revitalize that feeling through the most important thing one should preserve: its child condition."

V, 1996

"...Currently I try to maintain a fair balance, a compromise between the initial momentum and the organizing reason. I make many spontaneous sketches that I almost automatically do throughout the day... and when a motif is ripe, I transpose it to the fabric in one session. At the beginning I start with a little bit of forethought and then, as it progresses in a more spontaneously way, sometimes drifting apart from the path of the original project, until -it keeps the essence of the various consecutive stages – at the other end of the issue..."

Conversation with Juan Calzadilla, 1988