Background

Vigas was born in Valencia, Carabobo, Venezuela, on August 4, 1926.

Education

Oswaldo Vigas began showcasing his paintings and illustrations at a very young age, participating in several painting salons and exhibitions. He graduated from the School of Medicine, Central University of Venezuela, in 1951, although he never practised. So, Vigas became a self-taught painter. He devoted himself entirely to his artistic career for the rest of his life.

While studying, he went on painting and also took several art classes at the Taller Libre de Artes. He was a student of the Escuela de Artes Plásticas Cristóbal Rojas. There he got acquainted with painters like Manuel Cabré and Pedro Ángel González.

In some years, Oswaldo Vigas studied engraving and lithography at the École des Beaux-Arts and also took open courses at the Sorbonne (present-day Paris-Sorbonne University).

Vigas received an Honorary degree from the Universidad de Los Andes in 1999, and from the Universidad Nororiental Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho, in Barcelona, Venezuela, in 2012.

Career

Vigas' early paintings focused on the human figure, mostly a female figure; that theme would remain a constant one throughout his career. Soon his artworks became quite gestural and he became interested in pre-Columbian cultures and pottery. Gradually, he rejected conventional depictions and became concerned with pre-Columbian representation.

In 1952 he held a major one-man exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas. The same year he settled in Paris, where he had lived for twelve years. While in Paris, the artist was commissioned to paint five mosaic murals that were to become part of the Universidad Central de Venezuela, declared a World Heritage Cultural Site by UNESCO in 2000.

In the 1950s, Vigas turned to constructivism and abstraction. He participated in the I São Paulo Biennial and in a group show at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1953. From 1953 till 1958 the artist exhibited his works regularly in France and Venezuela. The artist represented Venezuela at the XXVII Venice Biennale in 1954; it was part of the Painters of Venezuela travelling exhibition at the Pan-American Union, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

During the late 1950s to mid-1960s, while still in France, Oswaldo Vigas was invited to take part in an important survey about Latin American art, the Gulf-Caribbean Art Exhibition, which was curated by Lee Malone at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. That exhibition travelled later to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; The Munson-Williams Proctor Institute, Utica; The Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; and the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center.

Vigas displayed his artworks at the Slater Memorial Museum of Norwich, Connecticut and the University of Nebraska Art Gallery, and was a participant of the Contemporary Drawings from Latin America show at the Pan-American Union in Washington, D.C. Soon, he was included in another large survey exhibition, South American Art Today, which was curated by José Gómez Sicre at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.

Influenced by his visit to Picasso in 1955, Oswaldo Vigas directed his 1950s works towards a search for an authentic language, mixing gestural, geometric and figurative artworks. In 1964 the artist returned to Valencia, Venezuela, along with Janine, his French wife and life companion, and continued to exhibit his work thoroughly throughout the country. In 1970 he relocated to Caracas.

The 1960s marked the beginning of the artist’s informalist period. Soon after his arrival in Venezuela, he became Cultural Director of the Universidad de Los Andes. Later, he also accepted an appointment as Artistic Director of the Instituto Nacional de Cultura y Bellas Artes (INCIBA). There he promoted the work of artists and exhibitions, as well as contributed to the creation of national Salons and awards to help artists from around the country. He occupied the post until 1972.

From the mid-1960s onwards, Oswaldo Vigas' work shifted to a new figurative phase, in which abstract shapes started to look like figures. The artist participated in the group show Latin Excellence Contemporary Hispanic Art, Xerox Corporation Center, New York, along with Canogar, Matta, Orozco, and others; it took place in 1976.

He exhibited his artworks at the Chicago International Art Exhibition, Navy Pier, Chicago; Venezuelan Art Today, 350 Years, travelling to Boston, Washington and New York; 30 artistas andinos latinoamericanos, at the Pittsburgh Museum, and The Latin American Graphic Arts Biennial, at the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art in New York, all in the 1980s. Concurrently, the artist created a series of tapestries and ceramic artworks, and his first bronze-cast sculptures.

In 1990 the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas Sofía Imber held a major retrospective of Vigas' works, presenting not only paintings and sculptures but also his ceramics, tapestries, and jewellery. In 1992 the Monnaie de Paris organized another large retrospective, entitled Oswaldo Vigas, from 1952 to 1993. The exhibit showcased one hundred and thirty-two art pieces including paintings, ceramics and sculptures.

During his later years, Vigas continued to work and exhibit worldwide, gaining further international recognition. Oswaldo Vigas was invited to participate in the Un Coeur, un monde group show that travelled through France, the United States, Brazil, Vietnam, Australia, and Japan. He was also offered to exhibit his artworks at The Latin American & Caribbean Contemporary Art Today survey, held at the Miura Museum of Art, Tokyo.

His last one-man exhibits Oswaldo Vigas: Transfigurations at Dillon Gallery in New York, and Vigas Constructivist: 1953-1957 were held 2013.

Achievements

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  Oswaldo Vigas became one of the most prominent and fruitful artists of his generation in Venezuela. With hundreds of one-man and collective exhibitions, Vigas was indeed one of Venezuela’s most relevant artists, whose artworks derived from the consolidation of art in the modernist age, marking an important path for understanding contemporary art from Latin America.
  
  Vigas was a recipient of a number of awards. For instance, in 1952 he received the National Visual Arts Award and later he was awarded the first prize at the Gulf-Caribbean Art Exhibition. In 1992 the city of Monte Carlo honoured him with the Prince Rainier Grand Prize. In 2004 he was the recipient of the Latin Union Award in Washington, DC.
  
  In 2008, the artist was designated Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France. Vigas received the International Association of Art Critics Award twice, in 2008 and 2014.
  
  Later on, the Fundación Oswaldo Vigas was created to expand Oswaldo Vigas' legacy worldwide. A major anthological exhibition was organized after his death; it travelled throughout the Americas. The first part of Oswaldo Vigas Anthological: 1943-2013 was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lima, Peru; the show then travelled to the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago de Chile early that year, and then opened in Bogota in July 2015. The exhibit also visited São Paulo, Mexico, and several cities in the United States. The travelling exhibition, curated by Bélgica Rodríguez, featured a large selection of Vigas’ most outstanding artworks, including 70 paintings and 5 sculptures.
  
  Oswaldo Vigas' work has been offered at auction multiple times, with realized prices ranging from $428 USD to $221,000 USD. The current record price for this artist at auction is $221,000 USD for "Paraíso inconcluso", which was sold at Christie's New York in 2015.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Zarabanda en blanco y negro

  • El Músico

  • Duende Rojo

  • Burlona V

  • Muchacha de los Andes

  • Con su sombra

  • Insecto II

  • Tetragramista II

  • La Celeste

  • Tacarigüeña

  • Tigre con pelota

  • Gran Bruja

  • Naturaleza muerta con compotera, pinceles, flores y frutas

  • Composicion IV

  • Torso

  • Bicephale Terrien

  • Dantesca

  • Personagreste XV

  • Selva seca

  • Transfigurante VI

  • Formas naturales

  • Policromía constructivista

  • Cafe de la Paix

  • Paraiso Inconcluso

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Nostálgico Solar

  • Sacrificante

Views

Oswaldo Vigas never belonged to any particular art movement. As described in his own words: "I was never rigorously abstract or rigorously figurative. I’ve really tried to be rigorously Oswaldo Vigas."

Vigas was convinced that the most important asset of contemporary art is the opening of a path to the archaic past. He believed that archaic art needs to be revitalized, and we need to relive it through what we must never lose: the child-like condition. We need to maintain, cultivate, and explore it, and through it find in the part of us that has never aged all the memories that belong to us.

Oswaldo Vigas didn't believe in purity. To his mind, purity is alienation and the search for purity is a trap, a trap that leads to nothing, and art is not nothing but everything. Vigas believed in art that gets into everything, in art that transcends. Therefore, he was convinced that art cannot be pure, it must be contaminated as life is.

Quotations: "I will die with a paint brush in my hand."

"There are two separate worlds within me. One world works with words. I would call it 'rational.' The other world manipulates shapes. That one is completely irrational."

"Our continent is full of dark signs and warnings. Telluric signs, magic, and exorcisms are deep components of our condition. At the same time that they reveal something; these symbols place us and compromise us in a disturbing, volitile world. Only a few South American painters have come close to deciphering this underworld. The intention of my painting is to reach these signs, interpret them, and translate these symbols into new warnings."

"All these arrivals and departures make me sad. I do not like to arrive and I do not want to leave, either. What I want is to stay - anywhere, but stay!"

"Being able to paint and write at the same time is ideal. You paint with the right hand and write a poem with your left hand. The brushes act as keys to open the locks, so that the words escape from their cage."

"The future of my painting is obliged to conquer itself every day."

"As an American painter I have one pictorial language of Western origin, but I am different from the European in that in America there was no classicism,so we are freer and younger. America is the now, there is no before. America is synthesis, it is the now and the future."

"Rich or poor in life, all great artists are millionaires in eternity."

"When you drink a glass of water, do you understand water? The most you can say is that it satisfies you to drink it, but you cannot say you understand it. It’s the same with the God of the Universe: you understand nothing. You can have experience but you cannot understand it. Do you understand the scent of a flower? You smell it and feel it, it is part of the realm of sensations, but it has nothing to do with rationality - that is, understanding."

Personality

Vigas was well versed in anthropology and primitive cultures.

Quotes from others about the person

• Jean-Clarence Lambert: "[Oswaldo Vigas was] one of the true inventors of Latin American art."

Interests

• Artists

  Pablo Picasso

Connections

Oswaldo Vigas met Janine, his lifelong companion and future wife, in Paris. In 1967 their son Lorenzo was born. Lorenzo is a Venezuelan director, screenwriter as well as film producer.

Wife:

Janine Vigas

Son:

Lorenzo Vigas Castes

Lorenzo Vigas Castes (born in 1967) is a Venezuelan screenwriter, director, and film producer.

Friend:

Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger (1881-1955) was a French painter, sculptor and filmmaker. He is known for the paintings influenced by modern industrial technology which established a new art style called "machine art."

Friend:

Wifredo Lam

Wifredo Lam (1902-1982) was a Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cuban spirit and culture. Though he was predominantly a painter, he also worked with sculpture, ceramics and printmaking in his later life.

Friend:

Max Ernst

Max Ernst (1891-1976) was a German-born French and American painter, graphic artist, sculptor and poet. He was one of those artists, who helped found both Dadaism and Surrealism movements. Max made paintings, sculptures and prints, depicting fantastic, nightmarish images, that often made reference to anxieties, originating in childhood. Also, his experiments with different media resulted in his invention of the frottage technique.

References

• Vigas Informalista: Paris 1959-1964 A groundbreaking study devoted to the period the Venezuelan artist Oswaldo Vigas (1926-2014) spent in Paris, France.
  2014