“Oswaldo Vigas is one of the true inventors of Latin American art. (...) He is one of those who have contributed the most to keep alive the “natural cultural tendencies” of his continent, which are, as he defined them in the AICA Congress in Caracas in 1983, “of pre-logical, magical, mythological, anti-rationalist character.” (...) Vigas has managed to carry out an original, personal synthesis, between these preserved “natural tendencies” and the latest plastic researches, creators of modernity.”

Jean Clarence Lambert. “Vigas 1952-1993” exhibition catalog. La Monnaie de Paris Museum. Paris, France. October - November 1993.


“His prophetic call translates the dream of each one of us, the promises of dawn pending a sudden transfiguration, the power of transmutation among all kingdoms, the inaccessible desire for enchantment.”

Gaston Diehl. Excerpt from the book “Oswaldo Vigas”. Paris, 1978. Editor: Armitano Arte. Caracas, Venezuela. 1990.


“The brilliant color, the firmness of writing, the deaf energies of a matter always in progression, create imperative dramatic tensions that Vigas keeps and exalts to the extreme limits of their resonances”

Raoul Jean Moulin. “Vigas” exhibition catalog. Paris, France. 1963.


“Oswaldo Vigas’ art is marked with the totemic accents and the chromatic violence that seem to be the soul of the most expressive and passionate paintings of Portinari, Tamayo, Matta, Peláez and Wifredo Lam.”

J. Tharrats. “Artists today: Oswaldo Vigas”. La Revista. Barcelona, Spain. 1957.


“Vigas belongs to a noble contemporary lineage where I put all valuable Latin American artists who loyally followed a point of view, without accepting changes imposed from outside by the pressure of trends or the urgency of change. Each period of his work comes from the previous one by a formal and expressive need. Besides, there is not a linear progression between one painting and the other, a simple moving forward, but he often retraces his steps and his attitude and maxims return on other points of view.”

Martha Traba. Foreword to the exhibition: “Oswaldo Vigas, 1943-1973”.  Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bogotá. Colombia, Bogotá. May - June 1973.


“Oswaldo Vigas uses the human figure as an archetype, a sort of ancestral imaginary where the female figure takes up a main place in this ancient and forgotten history about the origin of time before which the artist becomes the alchemist of myths and dreams”. 

Roberto Farriol. “Oswaldo Vigas. Antológica 1943 – 2013” exhibition catalog. Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. Santiago de Chile, Chile. January - March 2015.


“The figures in “Brujas” do not represent superstition at all. They are real “angels and demons” in a sense that they communicate the pure state of our emotions as unconscious feelings or urges.”

Marek Bartelik. “Painting with a Duende”. New York, U.S., 2014.


“Entering Oswaldo Vigas’ studio is to penetrate a universe full of memories, full of references to Venezuelan and Latin American art history, of presences and absences, of pre-Hispanic sculptures and a grand piano; it is also finding paintings after paintings, properly arranged in chronological order, waiting to be displayed in an exhibition... They are his paintings (...). The female figure has dominated Vigas’ work at all times. He deforms it, he baroqueizes it, he deconstructs and reconstructs it, and then reinvents it with strong color strokes on the canvas. With giant stops, he goes forward in its development, he admits changes in each period, but always keeping his figurative axis; he darkens or lightens his palette; he replaces smooth surfaces with textured ones; dense matter and shapes are entwined into the space in a quasi-abstract expressionism close to the North American expressionist school, to the art brut and the CoBrA Group.”

Bélgica Rodríguez. “Oswaldo Vigas”. Oswaldo Vigas Foundation. Caracas, Venezuela. 2012.


“The flow between past and present remains a stroke that marks his recent work. The figurative memory that rescues remote links in dynamics with the present of art is an essential basis in his poetry. Oswaldo Vigas’ work is of prime interest to scholars of Latin American art history.”

Lisbeth Rebollo. “Reflexiones sobre la obra de Oswaldo Vigas”, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2014.


“Vibrant colors, tense shapes, baroque unstable equilibrium composition, American roots which sustain his inspiration, Oswaldo Vigas’ art occupies an inescapable place in the plastic of our continent.”

Rafael Squirru. “Oswaldo Vigas and Venezuelan painting”. Opiniones Latinoamericanas magazine. Buenos Aires, Argentina. Junio 1979.


“Beyond rational ambitions, beyond the cubist and constructivist heritage, Vigas finds the way of a return journey to dark knots where time goes back, while being vertiginous like a waterfall that goes back to its origins.”

Dan Haulica. “Vigas 1952-1993” exhibition catalog. La Monnaie de Paris Museum. Paris, France. October - November 1993.


“At this point in time, an art such as Vigas’ is presented with a particular clarity and urgency. For those who can read the dialog in his canvasses as a myth and an abstract gesture, between past and present and between the individual and the collective consciousness of a race, Vigas’ work offers an approach to a deeply poetic and human sensitivity.”

Ricardo Pau-Llosa. Preface to the English edition of the book “Oswaldo Vigas” by Gaston Diehl. Editor: Armitano Arte. Caracas, Venezuela. 1990.


“There is something in Vigas that deeply binds him to the American land (...). There is a tenacious battle between the intellect and the Dionysian impulse even in his last compositions (...). He catches the human figure. He often opaques and distorts it so that it acquires brilliance.”

Juan Sánchez Peláez. “Las Brujas, árbol genealógico. Oswaldo Vigas: 1941-1952”. Gallería 22, texts for the catalog. Caracas, Venezuela. October 1966.


“Vigas’s painting has its own, non- transferable value as it assumes the great languages of contemporary art with an unmistakable attitude born from the tormented Latin American roots. So, Vigas’ painting is credible for discerning the essentially genuine and the inevitably alien, which it means something at the current times, because it is presented not only as an aesthetic paradigm, but also a paradigm of something that we may need more: an ethical paradigm.”

Carlos Silva. “Vigas 1952-1993” exhibition catalog. La Monnaie de Paris Museum. Paris, France. October-November 1993.


“To Oswaldo Vigas, the gesture of drawing as the act of painting, seems to envelop a troubled and sacred character in the shadows of a secret buried mysticism.”

Perán Erminy. Text for the “Oswaldo Vigas – Cien dibujos de 1965 a 1978” catalog. Caracas, Venezuela. 1978.


“There is a very attractive dominated tension in his recent works. A deaf palette, a solid, well-crafted matter, and a strongly architectured construction.”

France Observateur. París, France. 1961.


“A violently gestual and strongly tempestuous painting whose stormy outbursts impress us. His paintings react to a telluric unit held by an irresistible creative capacity.”

Lie Yll, Korean critic. Paris, France. 1963.


"Influences of Cubism, Expressionism, Constructivism, and Informalism are evident; portraying an artist consistently reconsidering established approaches to painting, and integrating them into his practice.(…) Never adhering entirely to figuration or abstraction, or to any particular school of thought, Vigas’s later works employ elements of many."

Sara Roffino. “Homage to History: Oswaldo Vigas at the Museum of Modern Art of Bogotá”. Blouin Art Info, Modern Painters, U.S. August 15, 2015.


"One of his innovations was to presciently, precociously mingle Venezuelan indigenous traditions with European and American modernism, the prehistoric, mythological and anti-rationalist sharing space with the formal, the geometric and the ordered. His curiosity was boundless, deeply influenced by pre-Columbian fertility figurines, African sculptures, 17th-century Spanish masters, the School of Paris, CoBrA, abstract expressionism, neo-expressionism and more, with no self-imposed off-limits sign to restrict his inspired, idiosyncratic jumbling of cultures and chronologies."

Lilly Wei.“Oswaldo Vigas said he found the root of his work in ancient culture”. Studio International, U.S. August 25, 2015.


“Both in substance and in form, the gray scales or the raw canvasses that dominated in earlier periods disappear to give life to the green, red and yellow, the colors of the tropics. It is the bustling life, characteristic of the Caribbean culture that is present.”

Eduardo Planchart Licea. Critical notes on “Oswaldo Vigas – Criaturas del asombro”. Caracas, Venezuela. 2006.


“As an ancestral imperative mandate, Vigas seems to assume the notion advocated by Torres García in his paintings: to make a virgin art but penetrated by the essence of every land to reach unification, in the diversity of all the art of the continent.”

J. Tharrats. La Revista, 25 to 31 May. Barcelona, Spain. 1957.


"As much a booster for his country's artistic offerings and legacy as he was a bridge-builder across continents and cultures, Vigas is remembered today for the broad scope of his accomplishments, the adventurous spirit of his art-making, and the vigor with which he pursued a richly creative life."

Edward M. Gómez.“Worthy proponent”. Art and Antiques, U.S. November 2015.


"Vigas was an artist in the purest sense. ’He was interested in creating,' says Lorenzo. 'He was not interested at all in spending time promoting, just being an artist.'”

Ann Binlot.“A moment for Oswaldo: Bogotá's Museum of Modern Art hosts seven decade Vigas retrospective”, Wallpaper, U.S., July 21, 2015.


“Vigas has his own mystery, his own lines, his own colors. He paints with a passionate depth, with torn sensitivity, looking the oldest expression of our land through modern lines. (...) I am among those who believe in the future of this young Venezuelan painter.”

Miguel Otero Silva.“Oswaldo Vigas: 1946-1952” retrospective exhibition catalog. Museo de Bellas Artes. Caracas, Venezuela. August - September 1952.


“Telluric and phantasmagorical matter take up the retrospective odyssey of the American man in the pursuit of his origins every day in Vigas’ paintings."

Aquiles Nazoa.“Mitificaciones” exhibition catalog. Mendoza Foundation showroom. Caracas, Venezuela. June 1970.


“Vigas’ evolution goes from a painting that recreates natural forms retained in the subconscious up to art concepts which purpose is to act in the same manner of perceptual impacts on the viewer.”

Juan Calzadilla.“La pintura de Oswaldo Vigas”. El Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela. 1957.


“Vigas does not kill spontaneity in his work. He loses his arm, he is carried away by nature, the paintings seem to spring from his fingers, the colors come out of his bloodstream, the strokes are a true reflection of the turns his spirit achieves.”

José Pulido.Caracas, Venezuela. 1987.


“In Vigas’ sculpture... the abstract condition of its surface, the skin that covers it, consists of smaller marks that make a textured whole. The body is the container. The surface is the skin of a three-dimensional corporeal volume that calls for contemplation when combining mental and emotional states.”

Bélgica Rodríguez.“Oswaldo Vigas – Las miradas cruzadas”. Caracas, Venezuela. 1987.


"Oswaldo Vigas. Anthological 1943 – 2013” traces Vigas’s career, and his talent. His strong, gestural strokes seen in the 1963 abstract painting “Bestiario”, measure up to the works of his more famous contemporaries. Vigas’s Hierática series convey the strong, geometric forms of the constructivist period, while the 1947 painting “Desnudo”, an abstract nude, shows his appreciation of the female form. "

Ann Binlot. “Oswaldo Vigas: The Venezuelan Painter Whom History Should Remember”. Forbes, U.S. August 16th, 2015.


“Vigas was an incredibly versatile and multifaceted artist,” says Katja Weitering, CoBrA museum director and co-curator of the traveling retrospective “Oswaldo Vigas: Anthological, 1943-2013.” “He was a true modernist, establishing a new art drawing from both personal, ancient and contemporary sources.” June, 2016


 “…a towering figure in Venezuelan modernism—an artist who bridged the gap between pre-Colombian iconography and the experimental art movements of the 20th century” From the @hyperallergic, by Barbara Pollack on Oswaldo Vigas: Transformations. July 2018