Alejandro Otero, Drawings for Sculptures: The Dimension of Flight
Author: María Elena Ramos
Alejandro Otero (1921-1990) is among the most important and influential contemporary Venezuelan artists. He led the abstract avantgarde of his country from the early fifties of the XX Century, and he exerted a definitive influence on the formation of successive generations of artists.
No other Venezuelan artist has bequeathed, along with a vast and varied work, a theoretical work about his own art, that of his time and of all times, as prolific, bright and visionary as Alejandro Otero. Testimony of this are his many writings, reflections, public controversies and published essays.
The selection of drawings in this book, made during two decades of work, allows us to delve into the development of Alejandro Otero’s creative thinking, to penetrate the intimacy of his gestation processes. They offer valuable testimony of his motivations, interests and creative ambitions, in the context of his research around sculpture and about the sense of art in his time.
Conceived for tridimensional works, these drawings are in fact autonomous and complete in themselves. They reveal an expressive virtuosity that attests to the artist’s imaginative freedom, his confidence in the renovating powers of art, fascinated by the progress made by science and technology. Endowed with a futuristic dimension, these drawings refer to the field of scientific utopia and fiction, to the era of space exploration, to the choreography of stars and satellites. They are about a positive and optimistic dimension of the future of man and his world, demonstrating that there are no dreams that may resist the powers of genius and inventions of a great creator, such as Alejandro Otero.
Adolfo Wilson
