VAEA supports a comprehensive publication of Venezuelan artist Alejandro Otero: Resonant Space: The Colorhythms of Alejandro Otero
Caption: Alejandro Otero’s Coloritmos
New York, NY, October 14, 2014: The Venezuelan American Endowment for the Arts, VAEA, supports a comprehensive publication of Venezuelan artist Alejandro Otero: Resonant Space: The Colorhythms of Alejandro Otero. VAEA is also delighted to announce that the publication is now available in bookstores and online via amazon.com.
The book was published on the occasion of Otero’s first major solo exhibition in Brazil, also titled Resonant Space: The Colorhythms of Alejandro Otero, presented by Instituto de Arte Contemporânea in partnership with Fundação Nemirovsky and Pinacoteca do Estado. Curated by Rina Carvajal, the exhibition is the first outside of the artist’s native Venezuela dedicated to the Colorhythms including a substantial number of works borrowed from public and private collections.
The publication evaluates the place of the Colorhythms within Otero’s oeuvre and within the context of international geometric abstraction, a focus that has never been explored in a book on his work before. Resonant Space: The Colorhythms of Alejandro Otero includes several essays that contextualize Otero’s production through various perspectives including essays by Kaira M. Cabañas, Juan Ledezma, and Nadja Rottner, leading art historians from Latin America, the United States and Europe, as well as writings by the artist and early criticism of his work.
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About Resonant Space: The Colorhythms of Alejandro Otero…
Resonant Space: The Colorhythms of Alejandro Otero is 250 pages, fully illustrated publication in English, focuses on the Venezuelan painter and sculptor Alejandro Otero (1921–1990) who was one of the most significant artists in the history of abstraction. The book includes illustrations of 48 works on paper and paintings by the artist, as well as essays about Otero’s work by: Rina Carvajal, Kaira M. Cabañas, Juan Ledezma, Nadja Rottner, Inocente Palacios and Miguel Arroyo. This illuminating book, the first dedicated to Colorhythms, evaluates their place in Otero’s practice and in the context of international geometric abstraction.
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About Alejandro Otero…
Alejandro Otero is considered one of the most important kinetic artists from Venezuela, though his influence and involvement spanned multiple styles and movements. Otero was a painter and sculptor who worked at times in a style of geometric abstraction using grids for Op Art-like effects, and at other times using gestural linear representation. In 1950, Otero began to produce collages made of found materials, with a focus on color planes and gridded compositions. Some of these were later called orthogonal collages, and became the foundation for his Coloritmo (or Colorhythms), today considered to be one of his major contributions to the field of painting. Between 1955 and 1960, Otero developed an extraordinary series of 75 paintings called
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Coloritmos (Colorhythms). Painted with Duco, a shiny industrial lacquer applied with a spray gun or roller, the Colorhythms are large-scale compositional modules executed on rectangular support structures. In these works, Otero succeeded in emphasizing rhythm and color over form; as a consequence of optical intensity, chromatic vibration, and the suggestion of rhythmic movement, the pictures seem to expand dynamically outward. In 1960, Otero abandoned painting to pursue large-scale “civic sculptures,” and made works that were increasingly architectural. He was also the founder of Los Disidentes group of artists.
Caption: Alejandro Otero among Colorhythms, Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, 1960.
To read the complete Press Release please Click Here: PR_AlejandroOtero