1950

Vigas founds the magazine Taller (“Studio”) along with painter Alirio Oramas. He receives the Lastenia Tello de Michelena Prize at the VIII Salón Arturo Michelena, at the Ateneo de Valencia, and he participates in the III Salón Anual de Pintura A. Planchart.

1951

Vigas graduates as a doctor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. He participates in the XII Salón Oficial Anual de Arte Venezolano at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, the Young Painters Salon, and the exhibition Pintura Venezolana Contemporánea at the Biblioteca de la Central Obrera. He attends the Escuela de Artes Plásticas Cristóbal Rojas.

1952

Vigas is awarded the National Prize for Visual Arts, the XIII Salón Oficial Anual de Arte Venezolano, Museo de Bellas Artes, the John Boulton Award, and the Arturo Michelena Prize for the X Salón Arturo Michelena at the Ateneo de Valencia. Vigas visits painter and sculptor Armando Reverón along with some friends and colleagues from the Taller Libre de Arte, such as Mario Abreu, Gabriel Bracho, Jacobo Borges, Manuel Cabré, R. R. González, Ángel Hurtado, Pedro León Castro, Armando Lira, Rafael Monasterios, Francisco Narváez, Héctor Poleo, and E. Elvira Zuloaga. He presents the retrospective exhibition Oswaldo Vigas: 1946-1952 at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas and at the Ateneo de Valencia. He settles in Paris.

“Vigas’ Brujas (“witches”), as symbolic elements, can be considered as archetypes with magic-totemic content that implies an essential symbolic scheme. They possess the power of instantaneity, of the transitory but, strangely–or extraordinarily--within a permanent reality in which a synthesis of form and meaning is established. This synthesis could be described as a sharp, enigmatic, and obsessive abbreviation.”

From Bélgica Rodríguez, “Las Brujas de Vigas,” El Nacional, April 8, 1979, Caracas

1953

He enters L’École des Beaux-Arts, where he takes etching and lithography workshops with Marcel Jaudon and Stanley William Hayter. With five mural works he takes part in the Síntesis de las Artes conceived by the architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva in connection with the construction of the Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas, which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2000. Vigas participates in the group exhibition Pintores carabobeños de ayer y hoy at the Ateneo de Valencia, and in the II Biennial of São Paulo, in Brazil. In France he attends the IX Salon de Mai and the Salon Réalités Nouvelles.

1954

Vigas participates in Oeuvres pour la Cité Universitaire de Caracas, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, of which artist and editor André Bloc presents analytical works in the magazine L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui. Projects for murals of Vigas are published by Michel Seuphor-- pseudonym of Belgian artist and writer Fernand Berckelaers– in the L’Art d’aujourd’hui, together with works by the French masters Jean Arp, André Bloc, Henry Laurens, Fernand Léger, Baltasar Lobo, Antoine Pevsner, and Victor Vasarely. Vigas attends the X Salon de Mai at the Musée d’Art Moderne de La Ville de Paris, for which artists like Jean Arp, Marc Chagall, Georges Dayez, Paul Delvaux, Alberto Giacometti, Emile Gilioli, Wifredo Lam, Henry Laurens, René Magritte, Alfred Manessier, Georges Mathieu, Henri Matisse, Roberto Matta, Max Ernst, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Gérard Schneider, and Gustave Singier are also present. He represents Venezuela at the XXVII Venice Bienniale, in Italy. He is part of the traveling exhibition Painters of Venezuela at the Pan American Union, funded by the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., along with Mario Abreu, Armando Barrios, Humberto Jaimes Sánchez, and Mateo Manaure. He presents the exhibition Vigas at the Galería Cuatro Vientos, in Caracas.

“Freed from the integrationist aesthetic demands of architecture, the drawing that delimits the figure accentuates itself, the substance becomes denser and the tones of the palette become darker, predominantly grey, ocher, and olive-green. A wild atmosphere envelops the characters, sometimes imposing itself on the remains of figuration that persist.”

From the text of the Vigas catalog, Galería Cuatro Vientos, Caracas, April 7, 1954

1955

His friend Humberto Castillo Suárez introduces Vigas to Pablo Picasso, whom he visits in Picasso’s house in Cannes, La Californie. Vigas participates in the III Bienal Hispanoamericana de Arte in Barcelona; Chantage de la beauté, Galerie de Beaune; XI Salon de Mai, tribute to Henry Laurens, Henri Matisse, and Nicolas de Stael at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; XIII Salón Arturo Michelena, Ateneo de Valencia; III Biennial of São Paulo, Brazil; and the 1955 Carnegie International exhibition of contemporary painting at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1956

He participates in the XVII Salón Oficial Anual de Arte Venezolano at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas and in the III Salón d’Empaire de Pintura in Maracaibo, Venezuela. In France, he presents Oswaldo Vigas, Blanc et noir at Galerie La Roue in Paris; he participates in Permanence de part, Musée de Picardie, Amiens; XII Salon de Mai, tribute to Fernand Léger, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; tribute to Paul Klee at the Galerie Craven, along with Roger Bissière, Victor Brauner, Jean Dubuffet, Hans Hartung, Roberto Matta, Bram Van Velde, and María Helena Vieira da Silva, among others; exhibition at the Galerie La Roue, along with Martin Barre, Dahmen, Gino Paoli, and Sugai; and Première Exposition Internationale de l’Art Plastique Contemporain, Musée des Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris, together with the Venezuelan artists Jorge Andrade, Ángel Hurtado, Humberto Jaimes Sánchez, Francisco Narváez, and Pascual Navarro. He also participates in the Gulf Caribbean Art Exhibition, a group show at thre Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, where he receives one of the exhibition’s three awards, along with Cundo Bermúdez and Armando Morales; Picasso and Contemporary Art, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva, Switzerland; and the Bienal Interamericana de Pintura y Grabado, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico.

“Vigas’ progress goes from painting that recreates the forms of nature retained in the subconscious to a conceptual art whose purpose is to act upon the viewer with sensory blows.”

From Juan Calzadilla, “La pintura de Oswaldo Vigas,” El Nacional, November 12, 1957, Caracas

1957

The artist participates in the Retrospectiva de pintura carabobeña y residente at the Ateneo de Valencia, where he also exhibits Oswaldo Vigas: 1953-1957. Both were subsequently exhibited at the Centro de Bellas Artes y Letras in Maracaibo, and the Fundación Eugenio Mendoza. Vigas travels to Venezuela and participates in the drafting and signing of an intellectuals’ manifesto against the dictatorship of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez. He participates in the IX Salón Anual organized by the Salón Planchart and presents Oswaldo Vigas at the Galería de Arte Contemporáneo in Caracas. He participates in the XIII Salon de Mai, tribute to Constantin Brancusi, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Vigas presents Oswaldo Vigas at the Sala Negra, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Madrid, Spain.

“The forms that until then were closed to reach, the Black Objects (“Objetos Negros”), began to free themselves from their conceptual rigor, incorporating the expansive graphics of pre-Columbian petroglyphs.”

From Gaston Diehl, Oswaldo Vigas, Armitano Editores, Caracas, Venezuela, 1992

1958

He receives the Puebla de Bolívar prize and participates at the XIX Salón Oficial Anual de Arte Venezolano at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. He exhibits Oswaldo Vigas of Venezuela at the Pan American Union, in Washington D.C., and participates in the Carnegie International exhibition in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He presents Oswaldo Vigas, blancos y negros at the Fundación Eugenio Mendoza, where he also participates in 26 Artistas Venezolanos.

“First with solid drawings, full of suggestions, later with oil paintings of delightful execution, Vigas has employed his refined sense of order to group his shapes. Black and white fuse without confusion, they mix and they keep being black and white, never gray. That is, an intellectual order rules and contains what could, by its very nature, lean toward the more hermetic ideals of a tropical baroque.”

José Gómez-Sicre

1959

Vigas is appointed Cultural Attaché of the Embassy of Venezuela in France, a position he resigns in 1962. He participates in the exhibition Arte latinoamericano contemporáneo at the Palacio de la Inquisición in Cartagena, Colombia, where he receives the Art Acquisition Prize. He participates in several group exhibitions in the United States: The Slater Memorial Museum of Norwich University of Nebraska Art Gallery; Collections of Pan American Art, Art Institute of Chicago; South American Art Today, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts; and Contemporary Drawings from Latin America, Pan American Union, Washington D.C. The artist participates in Veinte años del Salón a través de sus premios, at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas.