The pictorial mythology of Vigas
Alberto Fernández R.
El nuevo siglo
Bogotá, Colombia. August, 2015
Man is a born creator of myths because it is of utter necessity, because these stories are answers to those questions that have always troubled him. We only need to think about the Greek myths, on which Western civilization is founded, or for what the work of Oswaldo Vigas for the Latin American context may be: a kind of pictorial mythology.
Vigas (1923-2014) was a complex artist, some even may called him eclectic. From a formal point of view, his painting moved between figuration and abstraction, cubism and expressionism, geometry and informalism. As he summed it up: "I have been neither rigorously abstract nor rigorously figurative. What I have always tried to be is rigorously Oswaldo Vigas."
What always mattered to him was not to betray, to only be true to himself. This resulted in a continuous and tireless attempt to capture the Latin American soul with his art, which, ultimately, is none other than the interest in his roots and his identity. Hence the theme of this eclectic work that he developed for over 70 years. And this is latent even in his geometric periods when, for example, his painting was inspired by facial and textile designs by Wayuu Indians at the Venezuelan Guajira region or when he developed his murals for that wonderful museum in the shape of an university campus that is the Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas.
It is about a concern that traveled through much part of the continent and somehow brings his work together with some of the "great masters" of the region: Wilfredo Lam, in Cuba; Rufino Tamayo in Mexico; Oswaldo Guayasamin, in Ecuador; Fernando de Szyszlo, in Peru; and Candido Portinari, in Brazil. They all shaped the reality of their countries through those advanced artistic currents. Therefore some truth has that bombastic appellation as: one of the "pioneers of Latin American art."
But, paradoxically, in his native Venezuela, the Latin Americanist current was diminished by the omnipresence of that sort of abstract-geometric mural work led by Alejandro Otero, Jesús Soto and Carlos Cruz Diez, who displayed monumental works in Caracas and some provincial towns, and that were commissioned by the successive governments and financed by the dollars produced by the oil exploitation. A phenomenon that Marta Traba hit to qualify as: "official art".
The relationship with the artists of his generation was at least problematic. And while the geometric artists began a race against time to achieve an utopist universal language, enjoying the favors of cultural institutions, critics and the market; Vigas, stood apart from the 'easy way' by reaffirming himself in his particular configuration and setting a goal to find the Latin American cultural essence, searching for it in the neglected heritage of pre-Columbian cultures of his country. That is, while his contemporaries were proposing themselves to touch the universe, he kept striving to decipher that defining local characteristic that defines people which are born in this part of the world.
According to him, this was related to the irrational, the magical and the telluric, as well as with the woman figure, as a symbol of the origin and belonging to earth. That was how he fought the modern myth of universalism - which back then was embodied like no other by geometry, although it is now recognized that even these art forms have a local nuance- with fantastic creatures that sprang from his brush, among which Las Brujas “The Witches” (1948-1952), that series of paintings he made in his youth in which he makes a successful reinterpretation of the Venus of Tacarigua, perhaps, the most beautiful piece of pottery from all pre-Hispanic material culture found in Venezuela.
The Witches, moreover, are significant for the Latin American cultural history. As the historian Alvaro Medina states, these priestesses with horizontal head and elongated neck have a mysterious kind of air, a magical dimension, so it is no exaggeration to say that Vigas is one of the first artists to approach the magical realism, the same that later acquired international fame with literature.
A magical character that transforms his painting into mythology. The myths are far from closed answers and, in any case, are not in any way absolutely apprehensible. A kind of enigma and reinterpretation margin persists in them, you might call it a veil of magic if you like, in which resides his ability of not becoming obsolete. Vigas’ work presents itself as an essential source, if not the only, to answer the question about a Latin American art.
For all these layers of meaning, no one should miss the exhibition "Oswaldo Vigas, Anthological 1943-2013", a retrospective which was curated by Bélgica Rodríguez, and that is being exhibited these days at the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art. Not to mention that it is a unique opportunity to be thrilled by this pictorial mythology.