Oswaldo Vigas

OSWALDO VIGAS (Valencia, Carabobo, 1923 - Caracas, 2014)
"Pedro niño", 1997.
Oil on wood.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner. Signed and dated on the back.
Measurements: 50 x 40 cm; 71 x 62 cm (frame).
Oil on canvas in which the author presents us a portrait where the forms of the main character are diluted and defined through a palette inspired by Fauvism. This piece reflects an aesthetic language where various avant-garde movements and the tradition of art history are captured from a new perspective, in which the aesthetic transgression at the hands of Oswaldo Vigas gives way to the creation of an image with its own language and personality. Through the use of color, the work offers the viewer a new vitalist aesthetic that merges with a diluted and fluid technique that spreads over the surface of the canvas in an apparently random way. However, compositionally the artist has managed to create a completely harmonious image where the mastery of color and technique achieve an expressive and dynamic image that captures and creates a dialogue with the viewer.
Oswaldo Vigas was an artist of Venezuelan origin, known for his works as a painter and muralist, although throughout his career he tackled other artistic genres. He began painting the human body at the age of 12, when his father died. He studied medicine at the Universidad de los Andes (Venezuela) and at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas. While studying, he took several art classes at the Taller Libre de Artes and attended the Escuela de Artes Plásticas Cristóbal Rojas, where he interacted with painters such as Manuel Cabré and Pedro Ángel González, among others. His first paintings focused on the human figure, especially female, and on a theme that would be a constant throughout his career: witches. He became interested in pre-Columbian culture and ceramics, specifically the statuettes of the Venus of Tacarigua. In 1952 he won the National Plastic Arts Award and also held a solo exhibition at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. In 1952, these successes allowed Vigas to move to Paris. In the French capital he studied at the School of Fine Arts and took open courses at the Sorbonne. He was commissioned to create five mosaic murals that would become part of the Central University of Venezuela, later declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2000. During most of the 1950s, his works moved away from the human figure and towards constructivism and abstraction. In 1953 he participated, among other exhibitions, in the São Paulo Biennial and in a group show at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Between 1953 and 1958, the artist exhibited regularly in France and Venezuela. In 1954 he represented Venezuela at the XXVII Venice Biennial and was part of the traveling exhibition Painters of Venezuela at the Pan American Union, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution. Between the late 1950s and mid-1960s, while still living in France, Vigas was invited to participate in a major survey of Latin American art in which he received first prize: the Gulf-Caribbean Art Exhibition, curated by Lee Malone at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He also exhibited at the Slater Memorial Museum in Norwich, Connecticut, and the University of Nebraska Art Gallery. Influenced by a visit to Picasso in 1955 and by his interest in anthropology and the so-called "primitive cultures", Vigas channeled his works of the 1950s towards the search for an authentic language, combining gestural, geometric and figurative paintings. This led him to progressively explore connections with primitive cultures and the notion of a personal identity marked by telluric, magical and personal imaginative resources, which can be found in his works from the 1960s onwards. In 1970 he moved to Caracas. During the 1980s, Vigas produced a series of tapestries and ceramic works, and his first sculptures cast in bronze. In 1990, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas Sofía Imber organized a major retrospective of his work, showing not only paintings and sculptures, but also tapestries, ceramics and jewelry.