CULTURE: ART

The flowering of ceramics in the pre-Columbian period was intense; the oldest terracotta is the one known by the name of saladero, very simple, red with white decorations, while the one found in the Barrancas area has a stylized decoration, limited to the edges, and figures of birds, human or animal heads usually rendered by engraving. Different is the pottery of the area of ​​the lake of Valencia, which presents funerary vases in red or gray earth, sometimes with parts modeled in relief. There are numerous female figurines, standing or seated, with large heads and truncated cone bodies, to be connected with the earth’s fertility ceremonies. According to agooddir, during the colonial period Venezuelan art remained closely linked to Spanish models. To the sec. Some important churches of Caracas date back to the 16th-17th centuries, such as the cathedral, which was extensively remodeled in the 16th century. XIX. Various causes, including high seismicity of the region and the industrial and urban development of the last decades have caused the disappearance of many of the most ancient architectural testimonies. Of some interest are numerous examples of houses of the century. XVIII which, although extensively modified, retain the structure a patio and decoration, in imitation of the azulejos, which indicate their descent from the architecture of southern Spain. After independence, the influences of the various European artistic currents became more evident. While in architecture classical forms alternated with eclectic forms, in painting there was the first Venezuelan school, of popular inspiration, founded by J. Lovera. Some artists were linked to his current, until around 1850 the academic influence, of European derivation, took over. Exponents of these trends, cold and monumental, are M. Tovar y Tovar and A. Michelena, while C. Rosa, also active in the first decades of the century. XX, approaches in part to the ways of impressionism French. Very remarkable, in the twentieth century, the architectural development, favored by the process of urban renewal of Caracas and other cities. After being affected by the eclectic influences of the beginning of the century, Venezuelan architecture entered the rationalist vein, with often remarkable results (especially from the urbanistic point of view), thanks to the work of CR Villanueva, O. Niemeyer, G. Gasparini, C. Scarpa and others, Venezuelans and foreigners. Worthy of particular mention are the creations of D. Carbonell in Altamira and Gasparini in Macuto, where modern elements are combined with other traditional ones to achieve results of architectural and functional validity. At the beginning of the century, the foundation of the Círculo de Bellas Artes, in which avant-garde writers, poets and painters work, marked the moment of break with academicism. In the rendering of the Venezuelan landscape, painters such as E. Monsanto, the founder of the group, A. Reveron (1889-1954), considered by many to be the best Venezuelan painter of the first half of the twentieth century, R. Monasterios, M. Cabré and others oriented themselves towards a style of impressionist derivation. In 1918 the circle broke up, while foreign artists such as E. Boggio, N. Ferdinandov and S. Mützner exerted a considerable influence on local painters. In 1936 Monsanto founded an art school inspired by the Bauhaus was the starting point for the most advanced Venezuelan artistic currents, close to abstractionism, such as the group of “Dissidents” which included, among others, Alejandro Otero, Pascual Navarro, Luis Guevara Moreno and Perán Ermini. The second half of the twentieth century also saw the foundation of the Taller Libre de Arte, which was joined by Oswaldo Vigas, Omar Carreño, Mercedes Pardo and Luisa Palacios. The sixties were dominated by the kinetic art of painters such as C. Cruz Diez and J. Soto, while later the most flourishing currents turned out to be the neofigurativism (Nueva Figuración) of Jacobo Borges (b.1931), Alirio Palacios, Régulo Pérez, and naive artby Antonio José Fernández and Bárbaro Rivas. Many names emerged between the end of the century and the early 2000s, including Carlos Zerpa, Henry Bermúdez, Rolando Peña, José Campos Biscardi, Francisco Hung and, among women, Corina Briceño, Margot Römer and Ana María Mazzei, artists whose work progressively acquires international recognition.

CULTURE: MUSIC

Cultured music, which dates back to the end of the sixteenth century, for more than a century had its point of reference in the chapel of the cathedral of Caracas, in which masters such as D. de los Ríos (d. 1670), F. Pérez worked Camacho (b. 1659) and above all Father Palacios Sojo, the most important Venezuelan musician of the eighteenth century. His pupils were José Francisco Velásquez (1786-1805), Juan Manuel Olivares (1760-1797), José Antonio Caro de Boesi (d. 1814). The most eminent personalities of modern Venezuelan music are, in addition to the composer and pianist Teresa Carreño, active until the early years of the twentieth century, VE Sojo (1887-1970, founder of the Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela) and J. Bautista Plaza (1898-1965); later they were noted, alongside composers displaced on relatively traditional stylistic positions, such as J. Vicente Lecuna (1898-1954), M. Luisa Escobar (1903-1987), M. Ángel Calcaño (1904-1958), authors such as I. Carreño (b.1919), C. Teppa, JL Muñoz, JA Abreu (b. 1939), as well as Antonio Lauro, Antonio Estévez, Angel Sauce, Evencio Castellanos and Carlos Figueredo. Alongside the Symphony Orchestra, the performances of the Simón Bolívar Orchestra (1975) and the National Philarmonic Orchestra (1979) arouse particular interest. The Latin American Music Festivals which have been held annually in Caracas since 1954 in the large José Ángel Lamas auditorium, capable of 8,000 seats, have achieved excellent resonance.