Contesting Modernity: Informalism in Venezuela, 1955–1975

Contesting Modernity: Informalism in Venezuela, 1955–1975 charts the trajectory of the Venezuelan Informalist movement from the mid-1950s through its last manifestations in the 1970s. More than 100 works of art across a variety of media—collage, painting, assemblage, photography—showcase the richness and complexity of the underrepresented movement.

Informalism embraced many of the abstract gestural tendencies that developed in Venezuela at the same time as North America’s Abstract Expressionism and Europe’s Tachisme and Art Informel. This exhibition brings together works of art from the collection of Mercantil Arte y Cultura in Caracas as well as from other public and private collections in Venezuela and the United States.

Organized into five sections, Contesting Modernity presents works by internationally renowned figures such as Carlos Cruz-Diez, Gego, Alejandro Otero, and Jesús Rafael Soto. Many practitioners of the movement are represented, including Alberto Brandt, Elsa Gramcko, Fernando Irazábal, Francisco Hung, Mercedes Pardo, and Maruja Rolando to name a few.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.          

Whether or not you go, the exhibition catalog, Contesting Modernity: Informalism in Venezuela, 1955–1975, charts the movement’s history from its beginnings in the mid-1950s to its last manifestations in the 1970s. Essays by an esteemed group of scholars discuss the variety, richness, and complexity of Informalism and examine the ways in which Venezuelan artists embraced many of the abstract, gestural tendencies contemporaneously developed in Abstract Expressionism, Tachism, and Art Informel. Providing a thorough and comprehensive overview of this artistically fertile, yet underappreciated, movement, this volume highlights the diverse approaches and the wide range of media employed by Informalism’s key practitioners

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