Bio
Born in Caracas in 1918, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in 1930. Drawn to the muralist movement, he traveled to Mexico in 1938. Together with Pedro León Castro and César Rengifo, he brought a socially conscious representation of the human figure and the landscape to Venezuela. In 1947, he received two important awards: the Official Painting Prize at the 8th Annual Official Exhibition of Venezuelan Art and the Guggenheim Fellowship in New York. He participated in the 1953 São Paulo Biennial and the 1954 Venice Biennale, international exhibitions to which he would return in subsequent editions. He also held numerous exhibitions both in Venezuela and abroad, earning him significant international recognition. His work is held in the collections of the National Art Gallery, the Central University of Venezuela, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Latin America and the Caribbean in Washington, D.C., the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago de Chile, the National Museum of Havana, the International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice, and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel, among many other institutions.
(Original text by Carlos Silva)
