Armando Reverón
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| Armando Reverón | |
 Reverón painting a self-portrait. |
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| Birth name | Armando Julio Reverón |
| Born | May 10, 1889 Caracas, Venezuela |
| Died | September 18, 1954 Caracas, Venezuela |
| Nationality | Venezuelan |
| Field | Painting, Drawing, Sculpture |
Armando Julio Reverón (Caracas May 10, 1889 - Caracas, September 18, 1954) was the most important modernist painter of the late 19th and early 20th century in Venezuela. Most of his work was inspired by the coast, landscape and people of Macuto, located in the central coast of Venezuela, and was characterized by his view and expression of the bright luminosity of the tropic.
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[edit] Early life
Reverón was raised in Valencia by a family of Canarian origin, the Rodríguez-Zucca's, who took care of him during his early childhood and sent him to the local Salesian school after his parents separated. His maternal uncle, Ricardo Montilla, who studied art in New York and started to teach him basic painting techniques, was an important early influence to the young Reverón. Also he became friends with their daughter, Josefina, who later became a model for some of his early paintings. However, after a few years he moved back with his mother, Dolores Travieso Montilla, to Caracas. During this time he met a young painter, César Prieto, who convinced him to enroll in the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes, directed then by Emilio Mauri, in order to began his formal artistic training. At the Academy he studied under Antonio Herrera Toro, Emilio Mauri and Pedro Zerpa.
His early talent helped him gain a recommendation by his professors to obtain in 1911 a scholarship to study in Europe. The same year, he travelled to Barcelona where he joined his friend, the Venezuelan painter, Rafael Monasterios at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios y Bellas Artes to study under Vicente Borrás Avella. In 1912, after a brief return to Caracas where he tried to sell a portrait of the art critic Enrique Planchart, he goes to Madrid and enrolls in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando to take the classes of Antonio Muñoz Degrein and José Moreno Carbonero, an extravagant artist and teacher of Salvador Dalí. In Spain he became particularly captivated by the works of Francisco Goya, Diego Velázquez and El Greco.
[edit] Blue period
He returned to Venezuela in 1915 and joined the sessions of the "Círculo de Bellas Artes", founded by his classmates of the Academia Nacional, as a way to revolt against the dominant tradition of academic painting, characterized by its historical and literary subject matter. The young painters set up an independent studio without teachers or prescribed aesthetic guidelines and focused their work on the subject of nature. Although Reverón was absent when the Círculo started, the founders considered him an important contributor and member. In 1916, Reverón paints his first landscapes using only blue tonalities, a period of his work that will be later known as the "Blue Period". Shortly after he moved to the city of La Guaira where he lived teaching drawing and painting. There he met Juanita Mota, during the carnival of 1918 , who became his model and inseparable lifetime companion. Also during that time, Reverón worked with Nicholas Ferdinandov, a painter of Russian origin, whom he met in Caracas the previous year. Following the advice of Ferdinandov, Reverón decides to settle in the coast, initiating a new stage in his life and its work.
[edit] White period
In 1921, he moved to a farm near the beach, inside a neighborhood of Macuto known as Quince Letras. Just a short time later he began to construct the Castillete (or little castle) which would become his home for the rest of his life. His decision of building the Castillete was a symbol of the transformation of his artistic concepts. In this period he adopted primitive habits and broke ties with any kind of city-lifestyle withdrawing from society in his Castillete. Reverón felt that in this way he could develop a deeper perception of nature and then apply it to his method of painting, such as adopting procedures and materials that appropriately represented the atmosphere of the landscape under the effects of the glare produced by the direct light of the sun. This period of his work is known as the “White Period”, and spans approximately between the years 1924 and 1932. Unfortunately, the Castillete, which since 1974 funtioned as the Reverón Museum was covered by a landslide during the 1999 Vargas mudslides.
[edit] Sepia period
In 1933, he received the first impotant recognition of his work with an exhibition at the Ateneo de Caracas and later at the gallery Katia Granoff in Paris. At the beginning of 1940, he initiated his “Sepia Period”, characterized by the use of linen cloth (coleto) as background for the paintings of the coast and the port of La Guaira which helped him enhance the brown tones constituting the dominant colors of the composition. The themes of his paintings during this time were mainly beaches(playón) and sea landscapes.
[edit] Final years
An acute depression crisis forced him to be taken to San Jorge hospital. When Reverón came back to the Castillete, he took refuge in a magical universe, surrounded by objects of his creation such as dolls and animals which gave origin to the last and semi-delirious expresionist stage of its work. This figurative stage was characterized by the use of chalks (creyones) and by the creation of theater plays with his dolls that perhaps helped him recover his emotional balance.
The last of his mental crises took place in 1953, the same year in which he was conferred the Premio Nacional de Pintura for his Gran Desnudo Acostado, and had to be hospitalized again. In spite of the situation he devoted all of his efforts in preparation for a retrospective exhibition that had been announced for the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas. However, he died suddenly in the "San Jorge" Hospital on September 18, 1954.
[edit] Chronology
- 1889 born in Caracas on May 10. His was father Julio Reverón Garmendia and his mother Dolores Travieso Montilla.
- 1896 moves to Valencia under the care of the family Rodríguez Hosca
- 1902 becomes ill from Typhoid fever
- 1908 – 1911 studies at the Academia de Bellas Artes de Caracas and obtains an scholarship to continue studying in Spain.
- 1912 – 1913 studies at the Academia de San Fernando, Madrid.
- 1914 travels to France Francia. Works at the Fournier workshop, Chantilly. paints the landscapes around Paris.
- 1915 returns to Venezuela.
- 1917 moves to La Guaira. Teaches painting to rich families.
- 1918 moves to the home of Nicolás Ferdinandov, located at Punta de Mulatos. Begins to use blue tonalities in his work. Meets Juanita Mota, his model, companion and wife.
- 1921 moves to Las Quince Letras in Macuto. Begins the constrution of his residence and workshop El Castillete. Blue Period.
- 1925 begins the White period, which involves a deeper study of the light.
- 1927 – 1930 paints mostly outdoors and constructs his own painting instruments.
- 1933 stops using oil paitings and uses only pigments prepared by him. Suffers his first nervous breakdown.
- 1934 paints over cardboard and with fast strokes.
- 1936 goes back to oil painting and begins the Sepia period.
- 1939 builds with first dolls and paints female figures.
- 1945 suffers more nervous breakdowns and is hospitalized.
- 1947 builds more dolls, furniture, musical instruments, hats and masks.
- 1950 uses dolls as models and as characters for scenographies.
- 1953 another nervous breakdown and after treatment returns to painting. Receives the Premio Nacional de Pintura for his Gran Desnudo Acostado.
- 1954 dies on September 18.
