Diehl: Oswaldo Vigas, Armitano, 1990 (preface, 1992)

Preface: A New Look

How lucky for an author to be able not only to look back, but take a look forward as well, to go upstream along the creeping course of existence, of creation. With such an overview it is possible to pause and judge the potency of an artist’s work, to circumscribe its totality. Too often when confronted with a buried past, fixed in history, I can hardly do more than uncover a motivation, some aspect that may remain unnoticed. Faced with a living being, the smallest stretch of time spent may contain so many unforeseen events, upheavals-- so many comparisons between the past and the present that reveal the true extent of a temperament.

Such is the situation I now face, and I would like to share all the joy I feel. For nearly a decade, I have prepared and drafted the text that follows. In the case of Oswaldo Vigas, whose impetuous spirit is known to all, along with his vigilant curiosity, his extreme need to question, and his passion to invest totally in the problems of the moment, such a lag between the start of this task and the present day may contain plenty of transformations and repercussions in the work of this creator in full maturity. It is therefore impossible to pass over in silence such a large portion of his life and output. What do we find there? What discoveries are we afforded by these years that have been used with such fervor by our friend in his work?

On the occasion of my various visits to Caracas, I was pleased to admire how, in spite of the difficulties and trials he encountered, Oswaldo succeeded in continuing his growth, surpassing past accomplishments and new expectations, and showing rare adherence to his commitment. Nothing is more exemplary than his ability to maintain and deepen, over the years, the rich variety of his imagination, in a trajectory so well fixed in him and based on a wealth of collective memory. These mythical figures, rooted in the ancestral past that he brings vividly to life by conveying their communicative flow-- he continues constantly, in effect, to put them center-stage and mark them with a personalized imprint. It is a keyboard that he is inspired to play repeatedly with his natural mastery, while other musicians practice away with their limited range of notes.

Yet I have seen him expand his field of action year after year, and venture boldly but thoughtfully forth in the use of different materials, of which he discovers the inherent requirements before mastering them. He turns his attention to each material in turn, because each attracts him-- so much that his curiosity accosts him and and inspires him to solve the inherent problems as well as possible. It’s his strongest wish not to pass up any possibility of expressing himself, nor the intelligent exploitation of materials, nor the sense of monumentality inscribed for so long in his work and in his spirit, which is more and more imperative in his painting and his large lithographs. For him, this curiosity is a pretext to innovate, to experiment and see,k success with techniques he did not know until then: tapestry, ceramics, and, more recently sculpture. Oswaldo takes advantage of each intervention he makes in these areas unknown to him, never ceasing to be grounded in his own language.

In this desire to broaden his horizon, Oswaldo does not hesitate to keep breaking with his habits, to pry open doors apparently closed to him. He doesn’t avoid taking advantage of the opportunity, though without yielding to complacency or abandoning his style, to resume themes or freshly reinterpret them: portraits of Bolivar, Andean landscapes, or crucifixions. It is for one of his large-scale works, entitled "Crucifixion, To Victor Zawisza In Memoriam," that Oswaldo, to my great satisfaction, was unanimously awarded the HSH Prince Rainier III Grand Prize in the XXVI International  Contemporary Art Prize of Monte Carlo, in 1992.

When you look at his work as a whole, dear reader, I dare to hope that you keep in mind these successes that Oswaldo has achieved in recent years, which I have not been able to emphasize in this book. Are there not as many tokens and brilliant validations in the outstanding future that awaits him, because of this receptiveness, this openness of spirit that he has always shown? For only the great creators, as we have seen with Picasso, or with Lam and other South Americans, possess this exceptional faculty of renewal, and retain their attachment to the experience of it continuing to question as the years fly by.

Gaston Diehl

1992

The Lonely Road

"The hardest part of life is to be able to remain faithful to one’s self." –Old Arab proverb

Today, more than in the past, the increasing speed of evolution condemns true creators to solitude and difficulties. Either the creator is ahead of his time and a precursor, or his desire to preserve values he considers essential makes him seem stuck in a time that the public may consider bygone. This creates a climate of misunderstanding that, in general, only the passage of time will clear up, after which the creator-- who loves essential values above all—will be better appreciated.

In the case of Oswaldo Vigas, this misunderstanding may persist more than for others, as a result of both his work and his behavior-- his unexpected reactions to life and his polemic declarations, the direction he has maintained even through fluctuations and essential adjustments. As an artist affected by chance, he has had to fight with it under harsh circumstances, rejecting temptations and compromises, rejecting habit and rapid gains-- which sometimes oblige him to make apparent, sudden reversals. But he has above all been demanding and has never hesitated to reject easiness or accomodation, to break with habits, to choose uncomfortable positions and to opt for nonconformity, which has not been surprising.

Without going as far as Québecois painter Paul-Émile Borduas in his "Global Rejection" that influenced so much in Canada, Vigas has often resolved not to accept  opportunities that were offered, not to take advantage of the benefits he nevertheless seeks laboriously to obtain—and these refusals, coming at the very moment of success, have both disconcerted and intrigued the public.

Within such a complex personality, it would be awkward and unjust to try to establish categories of classification to represent the different attitudes Vigas has adopted. It is impossible to dissociate the man from the creator. Each time he addresses the press about his positions, he engages himself as much as he does in his paintings. He manipulates words if if with a paintbrush, with the sole desire to express himself efficiently with the greatest freedom, without a care for his own interests. His natural generosity always prevails. By the same token, has he not proved more than once that he is capable, just as felicitously, of practicing the craft of a number of literary genres? Let us also add that, given his background, he is able to analyze each situation with lucidity and objectivity, and to approach all problems with great open-mindedness-- facets of his thinking that have often worried public opinion more than they reassured it.

Finally, by choosing the path of an Americanism that he maintains in spite of everything, a purely spiritual character free from conventional stories or political creeds, Vigas has assumed a delicate and solitary role of great responsibility. In Venezuela, which leans more toward those preoccupations than the other countries where he has lived, Vigas has to struggle to make himself better heard. Even today, despite the undeniable successes he’s won, despite the great international honors he’s earned and the eminence which has been accorded to others who have opted for a similar focus-- Lam, Tamayo, Macea, Guayasamin, Szyszlo, and so on-- Vigas must continue to battle, on the national level, all kinds of resistence, both declared and hidden.

In order to answer these various questions and for all the reasons which we have just enumerated, it seems opportune to make an account of the activities of an artist who has reached full maturity and remind the reader of the sacrifices the artist consented to make. In doing so, presenting both his aims and his work, won’t we be able to judge for ourselves, with the greatest possible fairness, the importance of his contribution?

Incessant Combat 

Or, Fidelity to Commitment 

That penetrating and luminous gaze, that submissive and serious vision expressed by an ordinary face; that passionate, curious, yet reserved mind—it all struck me on my first visit to Venezuela in January 1950, when Vigas was one of the more assiduous visitors to an exhibition I presented of art from Manet to the present. I had also encountered him at an exhibition of the Taller Libre, organized at my behest by Venezuelan artist Alirio Oramas. An immediate friendship was formed between the two of us.

However, on my return, I saw little of Vigas, except during the third exhibition of the Taller Libre in October, since the preparation of my lectures at the University, at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, left me little respite; and indeed Vigas himself was absorbed by his medical studies at the Children's Hospital, which he completed in 1951. In March 1952, at the 13th Salon of Fine arts, Vigas’ La Gran bruja-- his “great witch”– which was submitted among other works, was given two rewards: the National Award of Arts and the John Boulton Award. In addition, Vigas was offered a retrospective of his work in the following months. Shortly after that, the Ateneo of Vigas’ hometown, Valencia, awarded him the Arturo Michelena Prize, and, on that occasion, Carlos Dorante placed him definitively within "a personal expressionism that searches into the deepest heart of the country.”3

Then, in August, Vigas took the stage with a set of 65 paintings and gouaches from 1946 to 1952, shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas, and in October at the Ateneo de Valencias, where VIgas had already shown. The exhibition was warmly received by several poets and writers: Miguel Otero Silva, Juan Sánchez Peláez, Alfredo Armas Alfonzo, Joaquin Gabaldon Márquez, Héctor Mujica, and Oswaldo Trejaere, among others, and the press dedicated lots of space to it. In the mischievous chronicle of Diablo Cojuelo4, which minutely summarized Vigas’ life in an article José Hernan Briceño5, published on the eve of his departure for Europe, and one by José Ratto-Ciarl6, Vigas was treated, despite his age, as a celebrated character.

How was a 26-year-old, born in 1926, able to assert himself wih such authority? No doubt he benefitted from circumstances and, to some extent, filled a void. At that time, the situation of the young Venezuelan painting was quite paradoxical. After the departure to Mexico of its founders, the La Barraca de Maripérez Group had dispersed. The Taller Libre (“Free Workshop”), created by María Luisa Gómez Mena and the Cuban critic José Gómez Sicre, was declining after four years of existence and headed for disappearance, due to lack of means and sufficient cohesion. However, Vigas had found for himself a stimulating environment and faithful friends:  Humberto Jaimes Sánchez, Angel Hurtado, Luis Guevara Moreno, Marius Sznajderman, Víctor Valera, Mario Abreu, Régulo Perez, Alirio Oramas, César Henríquez, and Enrique Sardá Virgilio Trompiz, to name a few. In Paris, the group known as Los Disidentes, or “the Dissidents”-- led by Alejandro Otero, Pascual Navarro, and Aimée Bacciscini-- firmly planted in that city and reinforced by the arrival of Rubén Núñez, Narciso Debourg, etc., launched tirades and proclamations against the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. It was the campaign of the Dissidents in favor of geometric abstraction, and Vigas’ work on mural designs for the University City of Caracas, which were carried out under this influence, that triggered in him a true nationalist sentiment.

But even the intervention of all these united elements would have come to nothing Vigas not already put in years of patient, self-guided study. Although he had  discovered the taste for painting at the age of twelve, while sketching theater sets for The Salesians of Valencia, he would not sacrifice his medical studies to a nascent vocation. In parallel, he would finish his solitary preparation as an artist while launching a university career at the University of Los Andes in Mérida, and then, from 1949 onward, at the Central University of Caracas. If his university degrees conferred a certain prestige upon him, they also earned him a fair amount of skepticism from the press. At the same time, his dynamism and wide-ranging interests (he had directed the university theatrical department in Mérida and gotten to write some plays) won him the friendship of the devotees of the Taller Libre, into which he was integrated as soon as arrived in Caracas. He participated extensively in the Workshop’s activities, passionately discussing topics in art, literature, and music, with writers like Juan Sánchez Peláez, Miguel Otero Silva, Sergio Antillano, Guillermo Meneses, Alfredo Armas Alfonzo, Rafael Pineda, Héctor Mujica, Carlos Augusto León, and Alejo Carpentier. As later reporte by Manuel Trujillo the faithful witness to Vigas’ disenchanted youth, the young artist was eager for culture and outside information during the postwar period. In Paris, with the monotonous menus of the Pensión Lucero in hand, near the Panthéon, this youth of the postwar period gathered, lacking money but hungry for culture and information: Jose Hernán Briceño, Oswaldo Trejo, Luis Julio Bermúdez, Rafael Lopez Pedraza, Amy Courvoisier, Manuel Trujillo, etc.

From a background of relative isolation, Vigas indulged in a frenzied exchange of ideas and experiences with his comrades, learning about the world’s artistic activity through books and magazines, seeing artworks and reproductions-- all things he had not had the opportunity to do until then. However, unlike many of his companions who were almost at the beginning, Vigas already had behind him several years of work and reflection, which have enabled him to acquire a serious mastery of the media. At the age of just 23 he had already demonstrated his astounding precociousness. At the Ateneo de Valencias, he had received two awards, the Best Poetry Prize of 1942, and the Honor of the First Salon Arturo Michelena in 1943; and he had presented his exhibitions of his work: the first, in 1942, with 30 works, paintings and gouaches; the second, in 1943, with 28 works; the third, in 1945, with 13 paintings and 10 watercolors and gouaches; and the fourth, in 1946, with 12 paintings and 11 watercolors or gouaches. When he won the Lastenia Tello de Michelena Prize at the VIII Salón Arturo Michelena, at the Ateneo de Valencia, Vigas had already completed a full artistic development, thanks to the formidable autodidactical efforts he’d been able to accomplish in a way that was practically contrary to logic, as his first biographer, Karl K. Ringstrom, pointed out in 1964.7

With remarkable confidence Vigas emerged into an artistic career in 1942, evoking in richly colored oils like Composition, and gouaches and authoritative drawings like Animal Tree and Virgin of Coromoto an abstract universe of intertwined forms and mysterious flowers, which had certain analogies with Kandinsky's works. Later, Vigas’ fantasy along surrealistic lines gave rise to an ever-strange world of faces and birds, mixed in curvilinear rhythms that begin to define volume and space—works like Tetragramista and Composición. Reality intervenes, to give rise to feminine silhouettes of flexible geometric patterns—in La Toilette, Abrazo, Specter of the Musician, Musicians Dancing, Child Playing), with vigorous contours and ornate backgrounds.

In 1944-‘45 Vigas tackled direct figuration in scenes marked by a human anxiety or perhaps a distant echo of the end of the world war (Contemplation, Melancholically, I Did Nothing, The Burial). But part of the dream remains nonetheless in these folded, drawn figures, whose arabesques comprise a graceful ballet that devours an airy horizon, in a luminous, bluish atmosphere. Going to the end of this road, the young artist found sweetness when he attempted a brief incursion into chromaticism and impressionist themes (Two Figures, Breakfast in the Field, Bathers). But he recovered and, following the example of Picasso, resorted to deformations and the use of terrain to obtain a climate of violence, in 1945-‘46 (Porteuse, Maternité Terrible). Vigas thus arrived at a true Expressionism whose possibilities he would explore during the following years, with colors ranging from muted tones to deep blues and ochres (Women with Bouquet, La Merienda, Frutera, Women with Bottles), and from intensified colors (Girl of the Andes) to the dark, powerful rings and syncopated rhythms that, in 1948-‘49, govern paintings like Two Figures in Yellow, Dancer, and The Three Graces so imperatively.

He could, therefore, on his arrival in Caracas, continue without problem in this vain-- Girl of the Fan, The Widow, Maternal Woman, The Rubber, Witch of the Tapestry—supported by an intensification of color, and more expressive and better-constructed graphics. Won over by the atmosphere of the Taller Libre, which was then showing Feliciano Carvallo, he gave free rein to a certain ingenuity (La Muñeca). However, another institution in the capital was soon to exert a strong appeal, the Museum of Natural Sciences, then directed by the painter-anthropologist Jose Maria Cruxent, where Vigas discovered with rapture pre-Columbian ceramics, petroglyphs, and the terracotta figurines and idols of Tacarigua, which after 1949 he began to convert into ideograms-- heads, faces, and human figures with absolute, convincing vitality (La Petite Sorciere, Animal, Femme, etc.).

Long a fan of folklore (The Virgin of Coromoto, The Procession to Guacara, Devil of Corpus, The Burial of the Sardine), Vigas believed that he now had every freedom to extend his field of action to the very sources of popular tradition, in order to bring them back to light and to access their joyous lyricism. Above all, he was willing to plunge into this magical unity that pervades Venezuela so strongly, to restore and magnify its value as a shared language. In this respect, I find the precise recollection of one of our initial meetings at a Corpus Christi festival in Yare, where Vigas took me to participate in this lively and colorful spectacle of dances, masks, and costumes that had preserved their strange character for centuries, mixing Christian beliefs with American and African ones.

The presentation in Caracas in early 1950 of an exhibition of contemporary French painting was the first time, as Vigas said during a 1968 interview, that he was able to see original works by Picasso, Léger, Rouault, Manessier, Pignon, Gischia, etc. This strengthened his convictions and helped him to become more aware of the fact that he could derive more from the line and color, to achieve greater freedom and a more personal language. Within a year, his color blocks had become bolder and more brilliant, as seen in the series devoted almost exclusively to his witches—a subject that would become of great importance to Vigas from that moment forward, as was noted by the writer Oswaldo Trejo, during one of his visits to the painter's studio. Trejo was struck, no doubt, by the mysterious aspect of these characters, which emerged 1950-‘52: Witch Girl, Violet Witch, Snake Witch, Twig Witch, Dragonfly Witch, Great Witch, Night Witch. These works show how well Vigas felt felt in this enchanted yet threatening realm.

The awards Vigas was given in 1952 were thus fully justified, and culminated an important phase of his evolution, marked by an increasingly pressing need for order and synthesis. Works like Omen, The Net, Yare, Alacrán, El Gallito show the beginning of a major turn toward the monumental. However, far from being satisfied with this success, which crowned ten years of hard work and increasing solitude, Vigas, far from exploiting the favorable reception accorded his retrospective exhibition in Caracas and Valencia, challenged everything by departing for Paris. The Dissidents had also done so, reinforcing from Paris their authority and their prestige. It was logical, by the same token, for Vigas to use his prize winnings on such a trip. However, I think there was a more important motivation at work: it would be far easier for Vigas to clarify his ideas in Paris. For some time, I had known that the moment of harrowing revisions was coming. Vigas had to find in the museums and exhibitions of old Europe the opportunity to intensify the "will to be" that animated his entire generation. Though Vigas had acquired the qualifications to practice the profession of physician, as his father had wished, he must have felt secure enough to follow a vocation which had become essential for him, which would impose new and constant sacrifices upon him. Rarely, among the artists, has such a heroic sense of willingness been pushed to this degree.

I shall refrain from entering into details, for lack of space, of this long period. But I can knowingly relate that it was a particularly fertile time. Each time I visited Vigas, I could see the position he occupied in Parisian artistic circles was growing, and I could see the paintings accumulate in his studio at 33 Rue Dauphine. The walls were also filled with mementos of the frienships he was making day by day, and the room became the meeting place for all kinds of South American artists and intellectuals. For, as was his custom, Vigas dedicated the greater part of his time to the others-- to his compatriots, companions, connections, and those he helped with counsel. He dedicated time to the realization of ambitious projects, which included so many selfless endeavors, such as the International Exhibition of Valencia in 1955, which attracted the attention of the whole world to Venezuela; and the Latin American Art Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 1962, which encompassed 300 works and 155 artists, and sealed for the first time the spiritual unity of the continent. He even accepted, in 1958, the post of Cultural Attaché with the Embassy of Venezuela in París (a post from which he stepped down in 1962).

In spite of the many absorbing occupations that corresponded to Vigas’ need for constant activity, his pictorial work did not suffer; in fact, quite the contrary: he was stimulated. And soon he gained notable successes in París, where he was immediately accepted at the Salon de Mai, at the Salon Réalités Nouvelles, and in galleries in the United States, where he exhibited in Washington and Pittsburgh, and in Brazil, where he exhibited in Sao Paulo. In 1956, for example, he presented a special exhibition in París, and later in Madrid at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and participated in a number of exhibitions in galleries and museums in París, Amiens, Houston, and Geneva. 

He was convinced that the moment of accomplishment and the completion of his work had now arrived. He could devote himself to it with a fervor of Benedictine monk and consented, following my advice, to take some courses in lithography at the National School of Fine Arts and to enter into friendly relations with many artists. Although he was very much influenced by Parisian life, visiting the museums and attending exhibition openings with ardent curiosity, a little dizzy from the constant agitation by conflicts arising between abstract abastraction and abstract lyricism, he took care not to yield to the seductions of fashion. 

In 1953 he completed the cycle of his great symbolic figures, America the Mother, whose majesty is reinforced through the amplitude and stylization of planes. But soon, as a result of his preparation of the five mural compositions he was commissioned to do by the architect Carlos Raul Villanueva for the University City of Caracas, he pushed simplification to the frontiers of abstraction, limited to signs: circles, curvilinear triangles, teeth, etc. Above all, he insisted on the demarcation of surfaces in rhythms and strokes, which lighten, modulate, sometimes fragment, and even lacerate (as in First Characters, Encounter, Annunciation, and Buildings). He participated, naturally, in the 1954 exhibition of all the works carried out for the Caracas university, which writer and critic Jean Cassou organized, at my suggestion, at the National Museum of Modern Art before the departure of the works for Caracas. The projects presented Vigas are distinguished by the frankness of their accent and their delicious tonal richness.

In 1954, and even more so in 1955, as I pointed out in the preface to his small exhibition at the Cuatro Vientos Gallery in Caracas, Vigas’ evolution accelerated and became more clearly focused on painting dense with collected and simplified signs, with colors noticably nuanced and muffled. Without seeking this an any way, he had not strayed from his intentions and remained attached to his original objective of endowing his country and the whole continent with a characteristic language. He confirmed this commitment in 1956 interview, during his exhibition Blanc et Noir at the Galerie La Roue in Paris, when he explained to a journalist: "I am going for purification of all that is not essential to the composition.”10 In 1957 he told Juan Sanchez Pelaez, "The future of my painting is in the obligation to conquer it every day.”11 In January 1958, for Estampas, he declared without ambiguity or hesitation,"What I am, a man of America"—and he completes his definition by saying "America is a cosmos."12 He joins artist and theorist Joaquín Torres Garcia or painter Jean-Michel Atlan in this desire to deepen the expressive elements, to give them a better spiritual range (Symbiose, Crucifixion, Tabernacle). In connection with this long period, the writer Achilles Nazoa ingeniously suggested a similarity between Vigas’ work and the "dense virgin forest, deprived of colors, where lianas and roots, mosses and foliage fill with fear the visions of the first men who penetrated it." At the same time, Vigas’ friend Sánchez Peláez commented with pride, during his Parisian stay, that Vigas had established relations with Picasso, Léger, Magnelli, Matta, Lam, Petorutti, Baltazar Lobo, Manessier, Pignon, and others. And the first visitors to Vigas’ exhibition of 1956, along with his compatriots, were Max Ernst, Vasarely, and Dewasne.

Given the extent that he had become integrated into the Parisian milieu, is it surprising that Vigas felt agitated by the city’s intellectual swirls and eddies, since the winds of crisis had been blowing in his life for years, helping to cause the retreat of geometric abstraction and the advance of gestural painting, Tachism, and soon a new realism? The truth is that Vigas was tormented by doubts about the tools of the plastic arts that he possessed with supreme mastery-- tools that, as he well knew, he should sometimes forget. In a way similar to that of Vasarely, but starting from a very different feeling, Vigas came to temporarily abandon, in 1956, the support and allure of color, to follow a severe discipline. In his series called “Objects,” he questioned the arrangement of the surface and linear rhythms, with the sole purpose of condensing his expression more decisively. This overriding compositional preoccupation led, by 1958, to a true crisis of conscience—as seen in Magical Object, Vegetable Object, American Object, Black Objects-- which raised questions about whether he should be pursuing a greater interest in sculpture. 

Despite his concern over the seriousness of the problems posed, and despite the often difficult conditions of its existence in París, Vigas did not show even the shadow of discouragement in either his remarks or his attitude. I always found him smiling, courageous and enthusiastic, on every visit. He absented himself occasionally in 1959 and 1960 to organize solo exhibitions and to participate in numerous mass demonstrations, in the United States or in París; and in previous years he had presented several shows that I sometimes prefaced: in October, 1957 in Caracas, at the Fundación Eugenio Mendoza; in November of that year at Caracas’ Galeria de Arte Contemporaneo; in December, in Valencia, with 65 paintings and gouaches; in May, 1958 in Washington, D.C.; and in September, 1958 in Caracas at the Fundación Eugenio Mendoza.

For someone as scrupulous and demanding as Vigas is, the dilemma that confronted him was is more philosophical or ethical than aesthetic, as he readily acknowledges. In order to come out of this period of austerity, puritanism, and restriction, which was contrary to his own rebellious nature, he had only to reconnect with the very matter of painting, his own reality. In the work of ths time he palpates, and rubs gently and cautiously, avoiding imprisonment in forms and still less in any circles; the painting is dully-colored but light, ductile. And from 1959-‘60, he recreated In a dream the mystery of the native soil, on which he never ceased to rely (Fertile Stones, The Earth Removes, Mineralization, Red Landscape, Germination, Passage to Innocence, From the Shadows). It was not long before he regained his authority and the matter came together rapidly; the brushstroke began to be charged with a superb violence that exploded in real fireworks in 1961, 1962, and 1963 (Concretization, Orinoco, Parameña)-- which resulted in Vigas receiving the Arturo Michelena Prize in 1964.

This slow gush from the underground finally exploded in broad daylight, becoming an obsession (Bull's Eye, the series "Signs," Megatú, La Liana Rojo, Guasima, Diablo). Figures emerge in the manner of ghosts emerging from the magma of dark colors, of ultramarines, of earthen colors or, more rarely, blacks, mixed or striped with whites, animated by rich, lucid accents (Guerrero, Personagreste, El Macho, Pragaria, Bertiezuela, Terrícola, Birds Agoreras).

Aided by the presence of his wife, Janine, Vigas had surely returned to his balance. In contrast with the informalism of his appearance, his worked drew on his expressionist depths, which had hardly left him. In spite of the tightness of his workshop and the lack of technical means, in 1963 he managed to make a remarkable series of engravings, in which he externalized his feisty creative passion-- described by the poet Robert Ganzo as “a voice renewed by Oswaldo Vigas to record these traces, these secret contours and forms which concern us so intimately."17 Raoul Jean Moulin rightly pointed out, in November, 1963, Vigas’ “exclusive love of freedom" and recalled that his work was "the manifestation of a personality, of a will to act on the world to dominate its forces and better realize them."18 

For some years the painter had been trying hard to reconquer himself, going to the depths of the soul, to the ancestral sources. On the subject of his 1961 exhibition in La Roue, David Miller noted Vigas’ imperative need to return to violence, and saw in his painting "hermetic, symbolic-essential," the reappearance of "witches celebrating the Walpurgisnacht," and the recourse to the "tragic colors of his country."19 At the same time Vigas felt the necessity for prolonged contact with his country, to which he has returned only for short stays. He finally decided, in July, 1964 to return once and for all, as I had advised him to do for a long time. In reaction to the reception of his exhibitions in Caracas, Valencia, Maracay, Maracaibo, etc., his return took on the justifiable appearance of a consecration.

To ease his mind and be able to dedicate himself fervently to his work-- several hundred canvases would begin to appear-- Vigas chose a retreat far from the capital. He moved to Mérida and, in order to secure his livelihood-- his son Lorenzo would soon be born-- he accepted the position of Director of Culture of the University of the Andes, in 1965. It was not the first time the artist had managed two different activities, and he devoted untold hours to official functions, organizing international meetings, concerts, and festivals, etc. He did not step down from the university post until 1969, discouraged by developments taking place within student circles.

The manifestation of flatness in Vigas’ work (Lady to the Birds, Guardian) would grow in 1969, in a slow, majestic cadence that occasionally gave way to the rigor of the abstraction (Playful, Dolmenic). More often than not, during these years, he preferred supple interlacings within vast colored swaths, where the figuration regains its place a little and where, above all, chromatic intensity triumphs unquestionably in powerful orchestrations that add to the monumentality.

The Mitificaciones exhibition held in June, 1970 at the Sala Mendoza was doubly striking. On one hand, these canvases of vast, luminous surfaces respond to an undeniable need for space and “murality” that finds an excellent resolution—a development confirmed by the happy feeling of peace emanating from them, underlined by subtle tonal modulations now going toward gray (Mythification, White Warrior, Hieratic II). On the other hand, the unrelenting spiritual unity that emerges from this work underlines the narrow connections among its themes; the common depth of human belief that restores life moment-to-moment again becomes an dominant sign—and, under the authoritarian brush of our creative painter, ever more urgent.

Far from stopping while on such a productive track, Vigas completed the run. While waiting to hear about a stained glass project he’d been invited to particpate in, he tackled tapestry and, with the financial support of Ana Teresa Dagnino, wove several designs in France and Portugal, hoping thereafter to see a national workshop established in Venezuela. His friend Jaimes Sanchez was involved in this initiative, the first of its kind in Venezuela, and the presentation of tapestry works by three pioneers took place at the Antañona Gallery in September, 1971. Among the five tapestries of various styles that Vigas did we find The Blue Witch, transposed from painting into flat areas of tapestry that are tattered and shredded, which allow the figure to retain all its eloquent presence.

At the same time, Vigas took the initiative of bringing together friends and companions-- Guevara Moreno, Jaimes Sanchez, Victor Valera, Regulo Pérez, and José María Cruxent, José Antonio Davila -- in order to remedy the atmosphere of neglected or futile opposition which can paralyze artistic life, here as elsewhere. One of the preparatory meetings which I had the opportunity to attend in Caracas was not lacking in animation or enthusiasm. Nevertheless, the press did not welcome the reservations or skepticism of these individuals, nor of the various demonstrations of Presencia 70 or Presencia 71 in Caracas and Maracay-- perhaps because the group, which was open to all, included many young people and seemed too eclectic.

In a no less courageous way, after having clearly noted in his statements to journalists certain governmental failings in the field of artistic policy that seemed too flagrant to him29, Vigas accepted heavy responsibilities within the National Institute For Culture and Fine Arts (INCIBA)—though soon enough, due to serious differences of opinion on Institute policy, he decided to step away from these responsibilities in order to safeguard his hard-won reputation and carry on with his art work.

Three exhibitions were held in 1973, of particular importance because they marked the prelude to the new evolution which was taking place in Vigas almost without his knowledge. He needed, in fact, to restore a certain balance, to abandon the rigorous cutting-by-flattening process he’d adopted to prepare cartoons for his tapestries. An air of freedom, a desire to fragment contours and spaces appears in some of the canvases (Aguiladora, Guajolote Enigmadora, Rastrador). The great retrospective which opened in May in Bogotá at the Museum of Contemporary Art was for him not only an opportunity to present the fruit of years of unceasing work but above all to verify the soundness of the concepts that emerged during discussions with Colombian artists who were in contact with their most authentic sources. Vigas even accepted the designation as one of "los quedados"—“the holdouts,” refusing to follow fashionable trends in art-- awarded by Marta Traba to those who "express feelings connected with the reality of a national background that can not be escaped."30

Thus encouraged, strengthened in his convictions, Vigas manifested more independence and affirmation in the works he painted on his return from Bogota and bRough together for an October exhibition at the Galeria Portobello Arte. Most of these works (The Conjurer, Lamenting Sisters, Big Rogue, The Mocker, Bird Feeder, The Coven, and the series of "Damas," "Rogues," and "Ancestors") mark a return to Expressionism, but in a sober, stripped down way, to the point of reducing the intervention of color to the extreme. The artist’s grammar of forms is so focused that it almost suffices to simply get it out, as the Colombian critic Sebastian Romero observed: "Throughout his career [Vigas] discovered a plastic symbolism that is very suggestive in itself.”31

Committed to this path, Vigas used acrylic paint during the years that followed to multiply his rapid notations, accentuate the total freedom of the workmanship, and increase the intensity and range of orangey reds. As Vigas explains to the critic Juan Calzadilla, "I am trying to find a fair balance between the initial impulse and the organizing reason. I do a lot of spontaneous sketches almost automatically throughout the day ... and when a motif is mature I transpose it to the canvas in a single session. At first with a little premeditation and then, as you go, more spontaneously. Many times in the way of the initial project, to the point of preserving the essence of the various successive stages, at the other end of the matter.”32

Ever the tireless fighter, Vigas in recent years has been battling without rest on all fronts. A crusader for the cause of art, his position seen by many as a shining rallying point, he continues aloing the path of seeking a language of painting that’s ever more public and communicative, as shown in his most recent work. At the same time, despite all difficulties, Vigas retains the profound sense of duty toward to the community, to which he has always so generously devoted himself.

Seeking His True Dimension

As we have previously pointed out, Vigas does not always succeed in satifying the ardor that animates him. Especially in the last few years, his epic temperament is becoming more and more uncomfortable with the material or spiritual limitations that the artist constantly faces in an age where conformity and submission to fashion are de rigueur. Thus Vigas manifests a pressing need to struggle, to explain himself, and also to convince. That is why it is necessary for him to find the means to testify and apply his ideas, but also to occupy a position that allows him to deploy his intentions publicly, which is his most natural ambition. 

In fact, for Vigas it is a question of transforming his own language in order to make it more efficient; and he has been engaged in this task with full awareness for some time. Rooted for so long in a heritage of traditions and myths that he relives intensely every day, he translates this heritage powerfully into passionate expression, just as his restless hopes fuel the desire to extend his field of application. And if some of these expressions can be violent and even tortured, what does it matter if they also achieve an aspect that’s both common to all and exalted?

If Vigas’ first ventures into the field of tapestry did not fully meet his expectations, he has recently rediscovered everything that can be brought to this field by the power of surfaces and the nobility of materials. At his request, I had recommended some weaving workshops in France that were led by distinguished artisans. Vigas has been able to establish close collaborations with them and, with his keen intelligence, make them worthy interpreters of his work, capable of both respecting and expanding his thought by effectively communicating the tricks of the trade. Both the Saint Cyr workshop, under the expert guidance of Pierre Daquin, and the workshop of Camille Legoueix in Aubusson, each in a different way, were able to take advantage of Vigas’ projects-- simple, routine work starting from the gouaches he made. And the result was spectacular, in the vigor of expression, the glory of the surfaces, the breadth of the overall rhythms, the variety of harmonies faithful to the original, the dull tones of the earth, flamboyant oranges and purples, roses and blues of rare sweetness—all orchestrated and graduated in various effects created in wool, down to the smallest knot. This is a new, monumental universe to which Vigas introduces us with undeniable facility, in dimensions that correspond to his talent as a creator and his expressive possibilities. Is this not a most striking display of that talent?

Recently, a happy coincidence prompted Vigas to become interested in another field he had not previously explored-- that of ceramics. As had happened to Picasso, Vigas was instantly enthusiastic about the technique, both strict and flexible, in which freedom plays a considerable role. Boldly and contentedly, Vigas launched without hesitation into an investigation of the many possible combinations of colors and glazes, making his mark in the substance itself. From the outset, he was assured of a varied and cnvincing repertoire of great eloquence.

Without altering the usual shape of plates and dishes, but introducing some modifications by choosing square or rectangle shapes, Vigas skillfully used the austerity dictated by the medium and achieved, despite the smallness of the surface, a vigorous, concise, and particularly imaginative, elliptical language-- again demonstrating his exceptional ability to re-plot his artistic trajectory according to the dimensions of his spirit. And what a great example of attacking a difficult problem he gave us in the vast ceramic mural he created in Valencia, underlining the importance of the role played by the Athenaeum in this city! To realize the synthesis of almost discordant, or at least different, elements was an arduous test to which Vigas applied himself courageously for months, showing tenacity and patience by doing tests right there on the spot. In order to rectify his ideas of figuration with the specific requirements of the bas-relief, with strongly marked rhythms, etc., Vigas had only to rely on his skillful manipulation of material of materials and his characteristic monumental eloquence.

Having succeeded in bringing this enterprise to fruition, Vigas demonstrated, as in his tapestries, that an alert creator can always expand the scope of his work by spending in new territory the capital he has earned victoriously in another—in this case, the field of painting.

Americanism: A Universal Calling

A unique and reasoned feeling has always governed Vigas’ efforts, undoubtedly helping him to endure all hardships: the quality of belonging to the American continent. It is an almost cosmic quality that does not refer specifically to matter or nature itself, but to their transmutation into a kind of spiritual anxiety. The dissatisfaction, fueled by experience, has been transformed over the years into something rising to the level of true mysticism. Instinctively Vigas reconnects with the legends and beliefs found not only among a people but also among the great myths of humanity as a whole.

Initially, as Alfredo Silva Heredia noted in La Verdad, in October, 1966, "It is the soul of our prehistoric peoples, in this series of tales of sorcerers and phantoms that we have heard spoken of in our homes, which has influenced [Vigas] and which is manifest in his paintings.”41 The impressions of childhood are, as everyone knows, those which most influence us most forcefully for the rest of our lives. The discovery of the idols of Tacarigua revealed to Vigas the possibility of a code capable of capturing the garden of images that accumulated in his mind during incessant reveries. By the time he was an adolescent, he already had developed a complete grammar in his initial series of “Sorceresses,” which he has admirably adapted to his needs and personality, and, better still, to his sense of pictorial creation, where he has always left a great deal to intuition. By going so thoroughly into this vein, where he has never ceased to dig, Vigas assumes, with lucidity, a heavy responsibility, since he now incarnates for a part of his generation the path to follow toward a necessary return to cultural origins. As he explained to Rafael Delgado for a 1968 article in Diners magazine, "The fabulous characters of our indigenous world ... the fantastic in our tradition, almost disappeared... the tradition of an America that is no longer visible or written. Everything must resurface, as in the poetry of the Peruvian César Vallejo.” Others had given validity to this impulse. In his remarkable prologue to the 1967 exposition, Salvador Garmendia cited Marta, Lam, Tamayo and, in literature, Alejo Carpentier, as guides of that "wonderful realism" which is so representative of the continent.41 

If Vigas’ first efforts were parallel to those of his friends in Paris, he differentiated himself quickly from those other creators. He strives, in effect, to create an individual poetic atmosphere, generated by the fusion-- I would say almost “communion”-- of various genres or domains, vegetable, animal, mineral, to lead to a true human transcendancy. Without searching for it through the pre-Hispanic civilizations, Vigas reconnects with the depths of the oldest beliefs and cosmogonies where the Mother Goddess stands, life and death at the same time, the inexhaustible source fertility and harvests, as well as of punishment.

After his stay in Paris, which gave him a rigorous power of synthesis and, according to the Spanish critic José María Moreno Galván, "reduced the demons of his native land to their essential form,"4 Vigas re-engaged with those demons, which were more virulent than ever, on his return to Venezuela in 1964.

The frenzied cycle of grimacing sorceresses, the infernal whirl that invaded his work again, could sometimes produce vertigo with their convulsive, poignant gestures. Vigas returned, in fact, to obsessive myths, the eternal ritual in which earth and woman are conflated into a single, magnificent theme. Alfredo Silva Heredia expressed this precisely when he described, in an article, "the terrible mother, leitmotiv of his work, the inexorable force of nature that is in his pictures with all its implacable strength."41 And for his part, Achilles Nazoa, while exploring the forgotten inspirations for things like popular dolls, said in 1970, "The myths of the Nature and the Sorcerers are the most ancient substances of which our blood is composed."43

Through the subject of woman, always present in his paintings, Vigas glimpses both an overwhelmingly luxuriant tropical nature and the enigmatic, devouring subterranean powers to to which all primitive peoples have rendered fervent worship. He insists, with a complicit smile, on the magical, often fantastic, aspect of our familiar universe to justify the poetic lyricism that animates and sustains his work. On several occasions he’s had the opportunity to explain in the media, as he did in November 1967, to El Nacional, that the aims he has set himself constitute "an awareness of what is Latin American. The interpretation of our reality in a magical dimension-- that is to say, in painting with symbolist values, but without literature or anecdote.”44 A few months before that interview, Vigas had written a text that will be remembered as a sort of credo: “Our continent is populated by dark signals and warnings. Magic and exorcisms are the elements of our condition. In the same way that they reveal our profound nature, they situate and involve us in a world of disturbing turmoil. My painting aims to reach this underworld, interpret it and translate it into new warnings.”45

Caught up by such an arduous and daunting task, why should he be distracted? As a young man enriched by his adolescent discoveries, then strengthened by the experience of maturity, deepened over the years, Vigas never ceased to find a fruitful source for his work in this task-- a basis for reflection, a subject for meditation. Even in the crucible of Paris, where there were many enticements, Vigas yielded to temptation only to improve his resources and the techniques of his craft, while retaining his own inspirational themes, envisioned in his youth, enriched by his adolescent discoveries. And why not? Do these themes not combine his most secret pursuits, both intellectual, which can offset the dangerous effects of arbitrariness and routine, and intuitive, which preserves a large portion of spontaneity? Why would he change over the years? Why would he allow himself to be engulfed in the currents of fashion? Did Bonnard, Reverón, Léger, Chagall, or Mondrian change during the long period that saw so many movements? Neither did Picasso, in spite of his multiple transformations, or Vasarely, in struggle with a progressive evolution.

His outrage erupts at accusations he has been going against the current and not obeying the imperatives that supposedly relate to present taste. In response to his detractors, Vigas declared sharply in 1967 and 1968 44 that it was too common for some artists to deify the industrial object, to practice useless experiments, or to give themselves over to the latest fashions. Ultimately, the press, which has always been curious about him, ended up recognizing the persistence in his efforts, despite some reservations toward "a feeling that he appears too sure of himself." Thus, celebrating the exemplary role that the painter has  played, Roberto Guevara paid tribute in a June, 1970 article to an artist who “brings us together, [who] is intercontinental, [who] enters the heart of the world."45

The radical individualism of the Expressionist always extends beyond personal identity, to reach the fundamental part of humanity and demonstrate an expansive universality. Think of Van Gogh, Munch, or Rouault. In Vigas, metaphysical restlessness translates his passion for life and, even more, his love for beings, his amazement at all births. His painting is an open dialogue with all individuals as much as with whole of nature. Sometimes this dialogue expresses confidence, or fever, or fury, or despair; sometimes it’s a profession of the dignity of self and others, fighting against itself. As Vigas told Carlos Diaz Sosa in July, 1964, "I use insolence in my painting, sometimes in shouts, sometimes in a low voice."

Vigas’s prophetic call reflects the dreams of each of us-- these promises of dawn, the expectation of an unforeseen transfiguration, that desire to finally enjoy the power of transmutation among the human, animal, and vegetable kingdoms; this power of incantation that remains all too inaccessible. At every moment the artist steps in to restore a harmonious balance with his work. As a painter, Vigas is a consummate technician. He admirably manipulates, when he wishes, the resources and splendors of a highly elaborate, dense, and complex medium that nevertheless retains an attractive freshness; he employs a wealth of multiple shapes in a supple ballet; he knows how to evoke the slightest effects from ranges and values of color; how to highlight, when necessary, discrete ratios and tonal graduations. And he knows how to avoid the the pitfalls and conformities of a long-established craft.

Nowadays, in full maturity, strengthened by his experience and with the stimulus of his own vitality, Vigas has enough time in front of him to continue fruitfully in the direction he has chosen: to continue blossoming and reaching toward the universalism that situates his work among that of the great artists of Latin America, who have restored to the continent its rank and prestige, better integrating it in the rest of the world.