Milton Becerra: Difference between revisions
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==Milton Becerra== |
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'''Milton Becerra''' (born [[Tachira]], August 10, 1951) He began exhibiting his works in 1970, while still a student at the Cristóbal Roja School of [[Plastic Arts]] in [[Caracas]], from which he graduated in 1972. |
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[[File:1974 Milton Becerra.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Lomas Prados del Este Caracas 1974-75 [[Land Art]] - foto Milton Becerra]] |
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[[Venezuelan]] artist graduated from the Cristóbal Rojas School of Arts (1972) under the [[Jesús Soto]] promotion. From [[1973]] to [[1980]] Becerra was assistant-partner in the workshops of the renowned masters Carlos Cruz-Diez and Jesús Soto. He participated in his first collective exhibition when he was still a student. He studied art trends such as Concrete, Neo, Kinetic, Generative and "Op-art". In 1973 he opened his first solo exhibition “Vibro-hexagonal Volume” that included a sound atmosphere presented at the Ateneo de Caracas, that won him the prize of the Third National Exhibition of Young Artists. |
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In 1976, after a second solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum of [[Caracas]], Milton Becerra made a series of interventions in the landscape. |
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He applies this knowledge to the development of irregular shapes called Hexagon Geometry or “Hexagonometry”, based on the arrangement of different modules in space based on Kasimir Malevich’s "White Cube" theory, and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s "Tractatus logico-philosophicus” concepts that investigates colors, their behavior in space and the division of forms through color ranges. |
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'''Milton Becerra’s''' first works appeared during the 1970s within this context. These works are located in diverse suburban areas of [[Caracas]] –in the imprecise boundaries that separate the [[metropolis]], the forest or the pastures high up, in the banks of streams or in the last streets and rows of houses of the city, at [[Colonia Tovar]] or at La Mariposa dam. Although it is strictly a matter of actions and interventions, these pieces end up being a series of photographs which, more than a document, constitute an initial artistic and poetic approximation to that vision of nature and the territory as sacred spaces, conducive to mystical experiences and intersected by a memory of cultures of peoples who have been silenced or have disappeared. This starting point will later characterize, very profoundly, the body of his work. |
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On the resulting works, Venezuelan art historian Alfredo Boulton (1908-1995) wrote: “Milton Becerra’s works characterize a concern about the volumes and strong structures, that accompany subtle chromatic features. We are, thus, in front of a solid object, but at the same time light and fragile.” |
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Concerned about nature and the enormous legacy of Venezuela's indigenous peoples, Becerra is able, in his first solo exhibition, to fuse the traditions of [[Venezuelan]] primitive cultures with the modernity of the artistic trends of the time. Becerra does not discriminate on the aesthetic aspects, on the contrary makes them coexist, transcending the artistic harmony and visual resources of primitive cultures with geometric abstraction and the Venezuelan artistic [[Kinetic art|kinetic movement]], relevant at that time. |
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Milton Becerra: In the 70s pioneered the “[[Land Art]]” in Venezuela |
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These first interventions act as experiments through which Milton Becerra attempts to establish a critical rereading of the ways in which the geometric and kinetic traditions, predominant in Venezuelan art during those years, manifest themselves. This occurs when the interventions incorporate gestures laden with subjectivity or with signs into nature that show an imperfect geometry that adapts to the forms of the stones or the terrain. Later on, the artist will adopt, in his interventions, the graphic style of the original native cultures, reintroducing or inventing forms, creating a sign alphabet that evokes a memory and a history from a geometric vision, where irregularity will turn into a form of expression that will allow new generations of forms to come into existence based on those already carried out. |
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Three years later Milton Becerra presented at the Caracas Museum of [[Contemporary Art]] his work “Programmed Modules”, where he expresses his concerns towards land intervention by [[photography]]. Under this context, in the 70s, the early works of [[Milton Becerra]] come into view, placed in suburban areas of Caracas, on the blurred boundaries between city and forest, or high pastures and the streambeds, or in the city’s last streets and homes, or in the Colonia Tovar, or in La Mariposa dam. Although these were, at the time, actions and interventions, these pieces later became Photographic Series, and constitute --beyond themselves-- his first plastic and poetic approach to the vision of nature and earth as sacred, conducive to mystical experiences and filled with the cultural memory of silenced or vanished peoples. This starting point characterizes later the context of his artworks. Becerra is considered one of the pioneers of Land Art in Venezuela, a contemporary art movement that uses elements of nature or its environments to produce a reaction in the spectator observing the landscape presented and intervened by the artist. |
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In 1973, he executed numerous drawings and works on paper, in which woven lines create graphic screens of very precise geometric shapes, but where irregularities also produce movement and evolve towards other new structures. These pieces, combined together under the name Hexagonometrías, form a body of ideas that, although originating from the Venezuelan normative and geometric pictorial tradition, dissociate from it little by little, and in a certain sense, negate it in its principles to the extent in which order evolves into irregularity. It is possible to discern in these early works the spirit of some subsequent trends in his body of work, like nets and drawings made of vegetable fibers and cords, which are connected metaphorically to the handicrafts of native peoples from the Venezuelan provinces. These works take on certain spiritual and cosmogonic connotations that relate to the principles work in spite of the distance, as if the irregularities created a resistance to the normative tradition. |
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It must be pointed out that, for artists of Milton Becerra’s generation, the importance of the geometric and kinetic tradition in Venezuelan art holds the significance of being a starting point with which one may argue, but with which one shares a depiction of radicalism and modernity. |
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Born in [[London]], the European Land Art movement had extremely different concerns to those in Latin America. The [[Land Art]] in the old continent pursues to take the viewer to an isolated spot where nature dwells in itself, away from the hustle and influence of large cities. Latin American artists --and Milton Becerra has been consistent throughout his dilated career in this regard— intend Land Art to reach for our roots and become part of the soil that sustains us. Becerra, concerned about the ecology, conducted at this stage works such as “A Blanket for the Meadow” in Caracas’ residential area, Lomas de Prados del Este; and “Analysis of a Process in Time”, in the El Valle parish, where he denounces the effects of pollution and deterioration of the landscape. |
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Milton Becerra’s options with regards to materials, anthropology, and poetry do not renounce this geometric legacy, but rather reinterprets it based on a memory of the ancestral. In this artistic context, it is a decision that emphasizes the perspective of identity with the objective of carrying out a contextual inclusion. |
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Towards the 80s Becerra relocated to Paris and developed a new perspective of his art, based on his research and perception of the Amazonian Yanomamo tribe’s customs. That is when his usual patterns and fabrics, impregnated with modernity, gave a twist that led to the development of his distinguishable installations, recognized anywhere in the world, from this artist born in Venezuela’s Táchira state. The mixture of fibers and fabrics with other organic elements like rocks, led him to develop series as “Chin-cho-rro” (1995), “Gotas” (Drops 1990) and “Nidos” (Nests 1995). |
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The conceptual proposal Milton Becerra moving towards experimenting with new languages and was hailed during his participation at the XIth International Biennale of young artists at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 1980. |
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In each of these works the artist appeals to the concept, and then he interprets it and nourishes it with abstractionist and geometric forms, where the light waggling of inert bodies defy the laws of gravity and create a formidable artistic piece. Chin-cho-rro’s installation --at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in San José, Costa Rica (1995)—under the invitation of Ms. Virginia Pérez-Ratton (1950-2010) not only showed to the public Becerra's interpretation of traditional hammocks used by indigenous groups, but also rested on them stones, as rigid bodies of those men and women who died of the Xawara endemic plague and had, as funeral beds, these pendulous webs. |
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Milton Becerra knows the path that as an artist he is following, and proudly acknowledges that he is taking uncommon Venezuelan art to all latitudes. It is impossible for him not to feel attached to his country, especially his beloved Amazonas, with each piece he makes. |
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Becerra was also invited by Alfons Hug, coordinator of the collective exhibition “Art Amazon”, organized by Germany’s Goethe Institute during the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit, ECO-92 (pt)), at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. For that exhibition he focused on the Upper Orinoco River, the Amazon Federal Reserve, the Yanomamo territory, and he immersed himself into an experiment, as a fully anthropological workshop, developing the theme “Xawara Yanomami - XXI Century”. Between 1992-1994 the sample was presented at the Museum of Art in Brasilia, [[Brazil]]; the Ludwig Museum of Art Forum International, Aachen, Germany; Technische Sammlungen, Dresden, Germany; and Statliche Kunsthalle, in [[Berlin]], Germany. |
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In 1992, Milton Becerra showed a new dichotomy between life and death when he participates in the Arte Amazonas project organized by the Goethe Institute of Brazil on the occasion of the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development, ECO92. His work focused on the Upper Orinoco’s Federal Reserve in the [[Amazon rainforest|Amazon]], inside [[Yanomami]] territory, and was presented as a field experience where the artist immerses himself in a type of real and living workshop, anthropologic and complete. work «Xawara [[Yanomami]] Siglo XXI » exhibitions : of Art Modern Museum, Río de Janeiro ; of Art Museum, Brasilia ; [[Sao Paulo]] Biennial, Ibirapuera Park, [[Brazil]] ; Lu¬dwig Forum Art International Museum, Aachen, Germany ; Statliche Kunsthalle, [[Berlin]], [[Germany]] |
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In 1997, his research, are returning to the [[Orinoco]] River in the [[Yanomami]] territory in the Amazon. |
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The same year, the exhibition "Identidad" (identity), at the Museum of Fine Arts of [[Caracas]], brought material values and their cult objects face to face, based on two concepts: the Siete cetros de poder (Seven scepters of power) and [money]. |
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A country’s identity is based on its economy, Milton Becerra explained as he talked about this exhibition. «A society’s four structural powers are therein contained, powers that restrain the maximum power. The (Scepter) represents military power and is one of the exhibition’s major symbols». Money, as the supreme symbol of power in Western societies, helped Becerra to situate and enrich his proposition on aesthetic connotations. The dollar — or the bolivar — seen as money in the form of coins or paper money, served as a symbol of the loss of identity suffered by Venezuelans, allowing the artist to reach the transcendence of a work of art -i.e. in relation to life and the problems of the environment. Becerra’s works using money as a focal theme started in the 70s. |
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His work is included in various international private collections |
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==Permanent monumental works== |
==Permanent monumental works== |
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==Publications reviews (selections)== |
==Publications reviews (selections)== |
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[[File:libro milton becerra.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Book Milton Becerra]] |
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* Christian Chambert, Konstuetenskaplis pag 38/39 Bulletin, Switzerland (1984) |
* Christian Chambert, Konstuetenskaplis pag 38/39 Bulletin, Switzerland (1984) |
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* François Julien “Artmania” L’Officiel hommes Paris, France (1990) |
* François Julien “Artmania” L’Officiel hommes [[Paris]], [[France]] (1990) |
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* Berta Sichel “The New Past” Atlántica, Nº 6 Las Palmas, Grand Canarias (1994) |
* Berta Sichel “The New Past” Atlántica, Nº 6 Las Palmas, Grand Canarias (1994) |
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* Reynaldo Roels jr “Arte Amazonas” Humboldt Nº 112 Bonn, Germany (1994) |
* Reynaldo Roels jr “Arte Amazonas” Humboldt Nº 112 Bonn, Germany (1994) |
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* Susana Benko “Milton Becerra – Identidad” [[Art Nexus]] Nº 27 Bogota, Colombia (1998) |
* Susana Benko “Milton Becerra – Identidad” [[Art Nexus]] Nº 27 Bogota, Colombia (1998) |
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* BIT - OIT International Labour Office sectorielles 1 edition Geneva, Switzerland (1999) |
* BIT - OIT International Labour Office sectorielles 1 edition [[Geneva]], Switzerland (1999) |
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* Juan Carlos Palenzuela “Milton Becerra Galería IUFM Confluences” [[Art Nexus]] Nº 37 Bogota (2000) |
* Juan Carlos Palenzuela “Milton Becerra Galería IUFM Confluences” [[Art Nexus]] Nº 37 Bogota (2000) |
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* Carlos Acero Ruiz “El Mundo Mágico de Milton Becerra” ARTes Nº 3 St. Domingo, R.Dominican (2002) |
* Carlos Acero Ruiz “El Mundo Mágico de Milton Becerra” ARTes Nº 3 St. Domingo, R.Dominican (2002) |
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Revision as of 08:04, 30 April 2015
Milton Becerra | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Tachira,  Venezuela |
| Nationality | Venezuelan |
| Movement | Plastic Arts, Land art, Fourth dimension, Installation art, Environmental art |
Milton Becerra
Venezuelan artist graduated from the Cristóbal Rojas School of Arts (1972) under the Jesús Soto promotion. From 1973 to 1980 Becerra was assistant-partner in the workshops of the renowned masters Carlos Cruz-Diez and Jesús Soto. He participated in his first collective exhibition when he was still a student. He studied art trends such as Concrete, Neo, Kinetic, Generative and "Op-art". In 1973 he opened his first solo exhibition “Vibro-hexagonal Volume” that included a sound atmosphere presented at the Ateneo de Caracas, that won him the prize of the Third National Exhibition of Young Artists.
He applies this knowledge to the development of irregular shapes called Hexagon Geometry or “Hexagonometry”, based on the arrangement of different modules in space based on Kasimir Malevich’s "White Cube" theory, and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s "Tractatus logico-philosophicus” concepts that investigates colors, their behavior in space and the division of forms through color ranges.
On the resulting works, Venezuelan art historian Alfredo Boulton (1908-1995) wrote: “Milton Becerra’s works characterize a concern about the volumes and strong structures, that accompany subtle chromatic features. We are, thus, in front of a solid object, but at the same time light and fragile.”
Concerned about nature and the enormous legacy of Venezuela's indigenous peoples, Becerra is able, in his first solo exhibition, to fuse the traditions of Venezuelan primitive cultures with the modernity of the artistic trends of the time. Becerra does not discriminate on the aesthetic aspects, on the contrary makes them coexist, transcending the artistic harmony and visual resources of primitive cultures with geometric abstraction and the Venezuelan artistic kinetic movement, relevant at that time.
Milton Becerra: In the 70s pioneered the “Land Art” in Venezuela
Three years later Milton Becerra presented at the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art his work “Programmed Modules”, where he expresses his concerns towards land intervention by photography. Under this context, in the 70s, the early works of Milton Becerra come into view, placed in suburban areas of Caracas, on the blurred boundaries between city and forest, or high pastures and the streambeds, or in the city’s last streets and homes, or in the Colonia Tovar, or in La Mariposa dam. Although these were, at the time, actions and interventions, these pieces later became Photographic Series, and constitute --beyond themselves-- his first plastic and poetic approach to the vision of nature and earth as sacred, conducive to mystical experiences and filled with the cultural memory of silenced or vanished peoples. This starting point characterizes later the context of his artworks. Becerra is considered one of the pioneers of Land Art in Venezuela, a contemporary art movement that uses elements of nature or its environments to produce a reaction in the spectator observing the landscape presented and intervened by the artist.
Born in London, the European Land Art movement had extremely different concerns to those in Latin America. The Land Art in the old continent pursues to take the viewer to an isolated spot where nature dwells in itself, away from the hustle and influence of large cities. Latin American artists --and Milton Becerra has been consistent throughout his dilated career in this regard— intend Land Art to reach for our roots and become part of the soil that sustains us. Becerra, concerned about the ecology, conducted at this stage works such as “A Blanket for the Meadow” in Caracas’ residential area, Lomas de Prados del Este; and “Analysis of a Process in Time”, in the El Valle parish, where he denounces the effects of pollution and deterioration of the landscape. Towards the 80s Becerra relocated to Paris and developed a new perspective of his art, based on his research and perception of the Amazonian Yanomamo tribe’s customs. That is when his usual patterns and fabrics, impregnated with modernity, gave a twist that led to the development of his distinguishable installations, recognized anywhere in the world, from this artist born in Venezuela’s Táchira state. The mixture of fibers and fabrics with other organic elements like rocks, led him to develop series as “Chin-cho-rro” (1995), “Gotas” (Drops 1990) and “Nidos” (Nests 1995). In each of these works the artist appeals to the concept, and then he interprets it and nourishes it with abstractionist and geometric forms, where the light waggling of inert bodies defy the laws of gravity and create a formidable artistic piece. Chin-cho-rro’s installation --at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in San José, Costa Rica (1995)—under the invitation of Ms. Virginia Pérez-Ratton (1950-2010) not only showed to the public Becerra's interpretation of traditional hammocks used by indigenous groups, but also rested on them stones, as rigid bodies of those men and women who died of the Xawara endemic plague and had, as funeral beds, these pendulous webs.
Milton Becerra knows the path that as an artist he is following, and proudly acknowledges that he is taking uncommon Venezuelan art to all latitudes. It is impossible for him not to feel attached to his country, especially his beloved Amazonas, with each piece he makes. Becerra was also invited by Alfons Hug, coordinator of the collective exhibition “Art Amazon”, organized by Germany’s Goethe Institute during the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit, ECO-92 (pt)), at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. For that exhibition he focused on the Upper Orinoco River, the Amazon Federal Reserve, the Yanomamo territory, and he immersed himself into an experiment, as a fully anthropological workshop, developing the theme “Xawara Yanomami - XXI Century”. Between 1992-1994 the sample was presented at the Museum of Art in Brasilia, Brazil; the Ludwig Museum of Art Forum International, Aachen, Germany; Technische Sammlungen, Dresden, Germany; and Statliche Kunsthalle, in Berlin, Germany.
Permanent monumental works
- Tepú-mereme, Pontevedra Museum, Galicia Spain (1996);
- Esfera pre-colombina, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, San José, Costa Rica (1995);
- Nointel Lotus, Château Nointel, France (1994);
- Oro Doble Spiral, Kistermann family, Aachen, Germany (1994);
- Dorado constellation, Rohrbach Zement Museum, Dotterhausen, Germany (1991);
- O, Noa-Noa Foundation, Caracas, Venezuela (1990);
- O, Die Stimme in der Kunst Klinikverwartung, Bad-Rappenau, Germany (1989);
- Meteorite, Ibirapuera Park, XVIII Biennial of Sao Paulo, Brazil (1985);
- Homenaje a la constelación del águila y las cinco águilas blancas, Mariano Picon Salas Museum, Albarregas Park, Mérida, Venezuela (1985).
Monographic
- Susana Benko, Artistic Education, Edition Larense, Venezuela (2009)
- “Analysis of a process in time”, Foundation Cultural Chacao, Caracas, Venezuela (2007)
- Christine Frérot “Contemporary art from Latin America1990-2005” Edition L’Harmattan, (2005)
- Juan Carlos Palenzuela “Sculpture in Venezuela 1960 – 2002” Citibank, Caracas, Venezuela (2002)
- Paco Barragan “The art that comes” Editions group auctions XXI, Madrid, Spain (2002)
- Yvonne Pini “Fragments of memory Latin American artists think past” Edition Uniandes, Bogotá (2001)
- René Derouin “By a culture of territory” Editions l’Hexagone, Québec, Canada (2001)
- Juan Carlos Palenzuela “Ideas about the Visible” Edition in the care of the author, Caracas, Venezuela (2000)
- Enrique Viloria Vera “Milton Becerra- origins” Editions Pavilo, Caracas, Venezuela (1999)
- Vision of Latin American art in the Decade of 1980, UNESCO, Lima, Peru (1994)
- Alfredo Boulton “History of the painting in Venezuela” Edition Armitano, Caracas, Venezuela (1979)
- Roberto Guevara “Art for a new scale” Edition Lagoven, Caracas, Venezuela (1979
- Jorge Gluber Young Generation” Argentina (1976).
Publications reviews (selections)
- Christian Chambert, Konstuetenskaplis pag 38/39 Bulletin, Switzerland (1984)
- François Julien “Artmania” L’Officiel hommes Paris, France (1990)
- Berta Sichel “The New Past” Atlántica, Nº 6 Las Palmas, Grand Canarias (1994)
- Reynaldo Roels jr “Arte Amazonas” Humboldt Nº 112 Bonn, Germany (1994)
- Susana Benko “Milton Becerra – Identidad” Art Nexus Nº 27 Bogota, Colombia (1998)
- BIT - OIT International Labour Office sectorielles 1 edition Geneva, Switzerland (1999)
- Juan Carlos Palenzuela “Milton Becerra Galería IUFM Confluences” Art Nexus Nº 37 Bogota (2000)
- Carlos Acero Ruiz “El Mundo Mágico de Milton Becerra” ARTes Nº 3 St. Domingo, R.Dominican (2002)
- Antonio Zaya, Portafolio “Ximetriamazonica” Atlántica – Las Palmas, Grand Canarias (2003)
- «Homenaje à Pierre Restany » exposición Milton Becerra- Update nº 4 – París, Francia (2003)
- Amalia Capoto “Milton Becerra-Lost Paradise” Arte al día Nº 102 – Miami, EE.UU (2004)
- Marina D. Whitman “Milton Becerra” Surface Design volumen 29 Nº1 pag / 50-51– Miami. (2004)
- Lorenzo Dávalos “Silente perplejidad” revista GP N°8, pag /arte-Caracas, Venezuela (2007)
- Patricia Avena Navarro “Arqueología de lo visible e invisible” Arte al día N°138 –Miami, EE.UU (2012).
External links
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