Alejandro Otero

Alejandro Otero (El Manteco, Bolvar March 7, 1921

- Caracas 13th, August 1990) was a Venezuelan painter
of Geometric abstraction, a sculptor, a writer and a cultural promoter. He was a founding member of the Los
Disidentes group.

of a large group of Venezuelan and foreign artists (including Hans Arp, Alexander Calder, Fernand Lger, Victor
Vasarely, Mateo Manaure, Francisco Narvez, and Jess
Rafael Soto) contributing to the project, Otero realized
a series of large-scale public works, including murals,
stained glass windows, and Policromas (Polychromies),
facades in glass mosaic.

Between 1955 and 1960, he developed the extraordinary series of seventy-ve Colorhythms, one of his major contributions to the eld of painting. In 1955, Otero
produced his rst Colorhythm. Painted with Duco, a
shiny industrial lacquer, applied with spray guns or rollers
on wood or Plexiglas, the Colorhythms are large-scale
immersive compositional modules executed on rectangular supports. Structured by parallel, evenly spaced,
dark vertical bands on white grounds, the paintings have
color markings placed between the bands, which activate the entire structure of the plane. In these works,
Otero succeeded in emphasizing rhythm and color over
form, resulting in a suggestive spatial ambiguity typical of Op Art. As a consequence of optical intensity,
chromatic vibration, and rhythmic movement, the picture
plane seems to expand dynamically outwards. With the
Coloryhthms, Otero proposed an idea of particular importance: the notion of the plane as a spatial eld of forces
in constant expansion, functioning simultaneously as immersive painting, volume, and architecture.

Life and work

Alejandro Otero studied art at the Escuela de Artes Plsticas y Artes Aplicadas de Caracas from 1939 to 1945.
In 1940 he won a prize in the First Venezuelan Ocial
Art Salon.[1] After his studies, Otero traveled to New
York and Paris where he focused his work on a revision
of Cubism in 1945, living in Paris until 1952. In 1945
he also went to Washington, D.C., where he exhibited
gurative works at the Pan American Union.[1]

He produced some of his most important pictorial series in Paris, including Las Cafeteras (The Coee Pots),
painted between 1946 and 1948, which marks his transition from representation to abstraction. Shown at the
Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas in 1949, these paintings caused a critical uproar in culturally conservative
Venezuela, which ultimately, helped trigger the emergence of modernist abstraction in Venezuela.[1] This
works became well known in 1948 at an exhibition in
Washington, D.C. since they served as a transition for In 1958 Otero was awarded the National Prize for PaintOtero to overcome Realism and start a new era for ing in the Ocial Salon, and in 1959 he represented
Venezuelan painting.
Venezuela in the Biennale of So Paulo, receiving an honMuseum
In 1950, Otero traveled in the Netherlands, seeking out ourable mention. He is in the collection of The
[1]
of
Modern
Art
(MoMA)
in
New
York
City.
the work of Piet Mondrian, an artist who became pivotal
for the development of Oteros new series of works, including Lneas de color sobre fondo blanco (Colored Lines
on a White Background) of 1951 and Collages ortogonales
(Orthogonal Collages) of 195152. These latter works,
dynamic collages that featured a tight weave of horizontal and vertical bands of multihued paper, show the artist
experimenting with the spatial and optical eects of line
and color. The idea of the module in Oteros practice
rst emerged in these works, in which he exhaustively explored a dynamic conception of space and pictorial structure typical of Op Art and Kinetic Art.

In the 1960s he abandoned painting in order to work on

a larger scale in his civic sculptures, such as Delta Solar.
He also produced collages of objets trouvs, as in Page
Picture No. 1.[1][2] Towards the end of his life he carried
out many monumental public art commissions in many
American cities. In 2012 the exhibition Resonant Space:
The Colorhythms of Alejandro Otero organized by the Instituto de Arte Contempornea (IAC), was presented at the
Pinacoteca do Estado de So Paulo, Brazil.

Drawn back to Caracas, he was invited to participate

in the integration of the visual arts into the architectural program of the Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas,
a project directed and promoted by the architect Carlos
Ral Villanueva, and considered the most advanced effort in architecture and urbanism in the country. As part

2 Footnotes
[1] Melana Monteverde-Pens From Grove Art Online
http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=
4445

5 GALLERY

[2] paper on wood, 1964; priv. col., 1966

See also
Delta Solar sculpture at the National Air & Space
Museum

References

Melana Monteverde-Pens, Grove Art Online

Gallery

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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