Oswaldo Vigas of Venezuela paintings.
Pan American Union, Washington D.C., USA.
April 15 – May 14 1958

About the artist

Continuing its program of introducing to the Washington area young Latin American exponents of new directions in painting and sculpture, the Pan American Union now presents an outstanding figure in the non-objective movement which has recently developed in Venezuelan art.

Oswaldo Vigas was born in Valencia, Venezuela, in 1926. In 1939 he enrolled in the local school of fine arts, and in 1946 he moved to Caracas, where he entered the medical school of the Central University of Venezuela. This marks the beginning of what one might term a dual personality: as a physician, Vigas specializes in pediatrics; as a painter, he explores a new world of forms. Without neglect of his scientific profession, Vigas devotes a very considerable amount of time to painting which he treats, not as a sideline or a hobby, but with the same serious sense of responsibility with which he practices medicine. In 1952 he went to France on a scholarship, and studied art at the Sorbonne while serving an internship in a Paris hospital. 

Vigas held his first one-man show in his native Valencia in 1942. Individual exhibits of his work were presented in Caracas in 1952, 1954, and 1957; the first was held at the Museum of Fine Arts, the others at other galleries. Abroad Vigas held one-man exhibitions at the Galerie La Roue in Paris in 1956 and at the Museum of Modern Art in Madrid in 1957. A controversial situation arose in connection with the latter when the catalog was suppressed by the Spanish censors because of a democratic declaration by the artist contained therein.

Vigas has participated in group shows in Paris since 1953; he took part in the Sao Paulo biennials of 1953 and 1955 and in the Venice biennial of 1954. He has exhibited in Switzerland and in various French provincial centers. A few of his Works were included in a Venezuelan group show at the Pan American Union in 1953; others figured in the Gulf Caribbean Exhibition, held at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts in 1956, at which Vigas won a special award. Recognition of his dual professional capacities was accorded him last October in Caracas when he received first prize at the first Physicians* Salon of Plastic Arts.

This is the first individual presentation of the work of Oswaldo Vigas in the United States.