Armando Reveron: a lust for light

UNESCO Courier, July, 1984 by Juan Calzadilla

FOR Latin Americans of yesterday, the only conceivable tradition to which the work of an artist seeking recognition could be related was that of European art and, more specifically, of modern European art. This was a field in which everything was alien to us, but we were quick to assimilate. Techniques, tools, industrial materials and concepts were taken, and sometimes snatched, from European art by our artists and academies and applied unchanged, except for the visual content, i.e. the subjects, as part of the artist's search for a place of some kind (even at the cost of losing a kind of hallmark of Latin Americanism) within the chronology of international art. Our modernity was based on offshoots of Impressionism and on what Herbert Read aptly called "the tyranny of the eye" which the Renaissance imposed upon all modern European (and by extension Latin American) art.

If the work of the Venezuelan artist Armando Reveron (1889-1954) is considered against this historical background it can be seen to represent a revolt against the Impressionist tradition in which a whole generation of artists were brought up and in which Reveron himself was trained. It is only in his early works, produced between 1908 and 1920, that there is a point of view familiar to an eye unaccustomed to the light of the tropics.

In accordance with tradition, Reveron accepted the rules of the game by completing his youthful studies at Caracas Academy where he acquired the conventional knowledge which, talented as he was, and capable of taking all kinds of risks, he exploited in the remarkable achievements of his first period, which lasted until about 1920.

A journey to Spain and to Paris led him to reflect on the deterministic influence of Europe on a dependent culture like ours, incapable of creating its own models (how far is this still true?). From this time (1915-1916) onwards, Reveron became obsessed with the idea of creating an art outside the official framework, rejecting conventional doctrines, traditional ethics, and standardized habits of interpretation which had taught people to assess values by reference to European models ("Ah, he is not as good as Monet, but you can see that he has seen Monet!").

Reveron realized that the basis for this revolt lay, if not in change of social structures--which was a lot to ask for--at least in a change in the pattern for individual behaviour. A deep-rooted need to isolate himself and to draw close to nature led him to settle in a spot (half desert at that time) on the coast near Caracas. Here he lived in contact with nature a life that was simplified to such primitive extremes that eventually his physical resistance broke down, leading to madness; here, between 1952 and 1953 he accomplished powerful works, both concentrated and boundless, skilful and yet dense, which seem to have been torn from the light which served as his central figure rather than an object (the incandescent light of our environment seen face to face and created on a stage dramatized by the deep reflection of the energy hidden in matter, in continuous movement).