Oswaldo Vigas Pinturas 1943 – 1973
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Bogotá.
Mayo 18 – Junio 15, 1973
Cultural and artistic integration should be the collective instrument in order to achieve unity and progress in Latin America, its accomplishment should be the goal of the national policy of each of the countries that are present in the region. Integration is an absolutely necessary process, because the people in our countries are becoming aware, and have begun to understand, that a nation’s greatness is defined to the extent that the people learn to know, appreciate and defend the cultural assets that it possess.
The "MCA": Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Bogota and El Minuto de Dios Corporation have a special interest to build closer and more dynamic cultural and artistic relations with all our neighbors and brothers countries.
By introducing this important Retrospective-Show of master Oswaldo Vigas, winner of the "National Prize of Plastic Arts of Venezuela," the idea that led me to visit his country in late 1971 is accomplished, and by establishing direct contact with the artists, the Museum received the best support to the program that will help to strengthen the relations between our peoples.
It is important to highlight that the interest of all the institutions that contributed to the realization of this exhibition of Vigas in Bogota, is of vital importance in the expansion, development and integration of the plastic movement in our countries and, at the same time, opens the door to a true "Artistic and cultural communication".
Germán Ferrer Barrera H.
Director
Contemporary Art Museum Bogotá
Oswaldo Vigas has brought together this thorough retrospective that spans thirty years of his work as a painter, in order to be presented in Bogotá.
A serious and thoughtful man, Vigas has been developing and thinking his work as a coherent pictorial body, as he belongs to a remarkable contemporary lineage that will also work very well in Bogotá: the lineage of the "quedados" (the “left behind”).
In this lineage I include all the courageous Latin American artists that faithfully followed their points of view without accepting changes imposed from the outside by the pressure of fashion or the urgency of change. This point of view reflects both the intention to express personal experiences, and the desire that such experiences become related, by any mean, with the inescapable reality of a national or continental tendency different to either the European culture or American culture.
The "quedados" therefore reject the idea that contemporary art must compete with the lines of technological and scientific advance that correspond to the highly industrialized countries on the one hand; and, on the other hand, also reject competition with the mass media’s pseudo-artistic products, which have transformed the artistic task in a more undifferentiated activity in relation with the consumer society.
These two rejections instantly transform the "quedados" into archaic, out of date and place individuals, at least from the perspective of the dominant avant-gardes tendencies. But "present" is not synonymous with "time", as well as "site" is not necessarily synonymous with "place". The "quedados" prefer to continue to accept the notion of "time", with its inevitable marginalization of an episodic and frustrating "today, now", as well as a despotic "present": embracing the cause of a "place", even though they are classified as provincial reluctant to accept a hypothetical universalism.
In this context of decisions that, today, are of far greater importance than swimming along with the sad current of deterioration and improvisation defended by magazines, galleries and museums around the world, is where we must place the work of Oswaldo Vigas.
How has Vigas been expressed within this scope?
The concern to compose and the concern of transmitting strong feelings and emotions to the viewer seem to lead this pictorial work. As for the former, Vigas acts as a careful and observer artist, paying attention to European abstract and expressionist formulations from which he has learned a profitable lesson: however, his work does not suffer any particular influence, but prefers to move in the wider orbit of an expressionist freedom where shapes and colors are emphasized in order to build a dynamic and emotional whole.
Alternatively, and in a very logical and cyclically way, this composition has gone through ordered areas marked by a clear geometrical tendency, and through specifically decompensated areas. A strict selection of colors has accompanied such changes: strident tonal sets have been followed by raucous periods and these have been followed by continued dark moments, where color and light are collected. The various situations are always resolved within the painting, except for a brief period of great insight and finesse, when he, along with the staff of the Venezuelan painting of the period, addresses the textural experience of informality.
So described, the work of Vigas could seem to be dominated by a formal spirit that would be above the will of meaning, as well as for a strong professional conscience that leads him to the everyday task of painting with a relentless discipline. If this second assumption is quite true because Vigas has, like few others, faith in the profession of painting, it is instead necessary to add an unambiguous interest in communicating to his formal searches and to the caution of his developments into one direction or into the opposite.
While formalism involves closed acts that find in themselves their own satisfactions and turn away from the transmission as well as the relationship with the public, Vigas’ painting is performed in constant vigilance in regard to the public and to the viewer, medium, artist trilogy.
Sometimes this desire becomes visible and apparent, as in a stage of visions and sharp cuts of typical Venezuelan land, transferred into a powerful and bright chromatic synthesis, or into the excellent period of his “witches”, where Vigas ventures into a national substrate traversed by superstitions and magic formulas.
Sometimes the message is more complex and immediate, when he resolves plastic situations where order or disorder is installed: the happiest in these cases are those where Vigas lets himself loose and encourages organic violence of forms that are related to his emotions.
Within the Venezuelan plastic scene, Vigas’ work is atypical, deeply tied to novelty and affiliated to technology and to the scientific aspects through its strong dominant experimental and kinetic currents. Vigas was never attracted by such currents, which in some way represent a Venezuelan "official art", and which structure Venezuela’s artistic image in the international artistic field.
To the progress notion that supposes these trends, Vigas has stubbornly opposed the notion of self-development in an authentic and harmonious life of forms that can occur only within the particular destination of each artist. In this regard, he has seeked that every period of his work is derived from the previous one by a formal and expressive need, and in turn, serves as a platform for the following: in addition, in between them, there is no linear progression, no simple step forward, he often retraces his steps, and takes an attitude and a subject under other points of view, of course, in accordance to the claim for their new experiences.
Because of this, like a human body, Vigas’ work has feet, body and head, but also shows development and maturity and, also resembles his own paths. It belongs to the professional normalcy. Like any normal being, it has likes, desires and a selective calling, but it does not have obsessions. He tries to reconcile rather than break. His conflicts are short, are never really dramatic and again end up in fraternal situations.
His work is ruled by a healthy spirit, a strong visual honesty and by the generous idea of providing warmth and feelings to the plastic materials from which it serves. All along this hard work, Vigas finally achieves this purpose, often well resolved and always sensitive and vibrant.
Marta Traba.