Pictoric incantations from Latin America
La República
Lima, Perú. October, 2014
Mythological Rhythms. The traveling exhibition Oswaldo Vigas, Anthological 1943-2013 is inaugurated today in Lima, showing the esthetic of this Latin American art pioneer who embarked in a quest for the continent arcane echoes.
One of Venezuelans most recognized contemporary art painters, Oswaldo Vigas, was scheduled to travel to Perú and to almost all Latin America, in order to show his great retrospective exhibition, however, this ambitious project could not be fulfilled because death found the great master in April of this year.
However –as always happens with the great artists- his work has survived him, so the exhibition Oswaldo Vigas, Anthological 1943-2013 is going to be inaugurated today at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo. The exhibition features beside the assistance of Vigas’ widow and son, the presence of the curator Bélgica Rodríguez and French art critic Jean-Clarence Lamber.
Vigas’ retrospective, whose work is considered as one of Latin America’s art pioneers next to painters like Fernando de Szyszlo, Roberto Matta, Wifredo Lam or Rufino Tamayo, will gather seventy pictures and six sculptures that portray his esthetic project.
The reason that this project was designed to travel all around the American continent, does not only respond to the quality of the Venezuelan master, but to the fact that his creations are strongly drawn by the ideal to become into an original synthesis of Latin Americas’ cultural roots and the artistic currents of contemporaneity.
Sculptures, engraving, ceramic, drawing and tapestry were also disciplines into which this author dumped his quests. French art critic Gilbert Lascault has stated that with this expressions, Vigas “allows to perceive the equivalences of nature’s elements, and to express the harmonies and rhythms of the cosmos”.
One of his first retrospectives on the early 1950s caused controversy due to the presence of “Las Brujas” (The Witches) series, in which he stated his fascination for the hidden and obscure forces related with magic, telluric symbols and exorcisms present in the American continent.
However, this controversy would not prevent Oswaldo Vigas’ work to be recognized with different awards like the Venezuela’s Fine Arts National Award, the Gulf Caribbean Art Exhibition Award of the Museum of Houston and the Prince Rainier III of Monaco Contemporary Art Great Award, among others.
At the present time, the Oswaldo Vigas Foundation is working on the production of an anthological publication that gathers up much of the artist’s prolific work, which was shown during his lifetime in more than one hundred individual exhibitions, numerous collective exhibitions, biennials and art salons.
The Szyszlo friendship
On the early 1960s gatherings in the famous Latin Quarter of Paris, Vigas had the opportunity to strengthen ties with Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Antonio Berni and Fernando de Szyszlo, among others.
The personal empathy and the sense of proximity given by the condition of being a Latin American artist, helped Vigas develop a very strong friendship with Szyszlo. Both artists were connected by a modern esthetic, profoundly rooted to its local context and to their Pre-Hispanic roots.
This close relationship was evidenced by the joint exhibitions that both artists presented and the different visits they made to each other ateliers during the 1970s; visits which created a definitive feedback that helped very important works to emerge.
Will be a conference with Elida Román, Bélgica Rodríguez, Jean-Clarence Lambert and Jean Francois Py.