Ralli Museum Santiago exhibits for the first time "More than Geometry", a retrospective painting exhibition of the prominent national artist Ramon Vergara Grez. The purpose is to remember his important legacy in Latin America and spread the artistic and cultural heritage that the University of Talca possesses.
On this occasion, in conjunction with the University of Talca and Edith Vergara Bolivar, daughter of the artist who is responsible for the collection, Ralli Museum Santiago will exhibit for the first time a retrospective painting exhibition, "More than geometry", of the prominent national artist Ramon Vergara Grez. The purpose is to remember his important legacy in Latin America and spread the artistic and cultural heritage that the University possesses.
In July 2012 the University of Talca signed a commodatum with Ms. Vergara Bolivar for the preservation and dissemination of 120 art works by Vergara Grez, 5 of which were donated by the family to the University’s Art Gallery and 16 are being displayed in Ralli Museum Santiago, from Wednesday April 22, 2015.
The curatorship, by Edith Vergara Bolivar and Arturo Cariceo covers three periods of the author's work: "I chose the most suitable works for maintaining a dialogue with the permanent collection, in which the magical or metaphysical realism are relevant, and the chromaticism and themes of the Andean geometry converse well with the other strong part of the Ralli Collection, based on Andean authors", tells us the curator.
The 3 periods are, according to quotes from the artist:
1. Metaphysical realism (1954 and 1960)
"The tip, the bud of a flower, the egg in primitive cultures, have been symbols of life." He adds, "For me the egg is energy, space-time contained. The reality I paint is not the one I have before my eyes but rather the one I discover as another of its faces, through an interplay of relations using the intellect."
2. “The moons” Series, which focuses on the Andean cosmovision (1960)
"The dialogue of man today is performed with space (internal and external). It’s the task of the artist to do it objectively and affectively through his medium to give value to the man who experiences the anguish of immeasurable space."
3. “Andean Geometry” which the artist executes especially in his last period. He frees chromaticism, and draws his themes closer to the original Andean peoples, making them almost figurative.
Brief biography | Ramon Vergara Grez
Chilean painter born in Mejillones (Antofagasta, 1923). He studied there and later entered the School of Fine Arts of the University of Chile in Santiago, where he was student of the masters Pablo Burchard and Gustavo Carrasco, graduating in 1946. He further developed in Brazil (1948), Italy (1954) and the United States (1964) thanks to grants from the governments of those nations.
Founder of the "Rectangle Group" (“Grupo Rectángulo”) (1955), and the "Shape and Space Movement" (1962), he was a member of the Academy of Fine Arts of the Institute of Chile (1972) and its secretary (1974 and 1976). Defender of Neoplasticism in Chile, a plastic arts current seeking a strictly rational art, without the intervention of the subjective, the sentimental and the figurative. He broke up with the naturalistic conception of art, he moved away from traditional Chilean painting and approached art from intellectual reflection and the study of pure forms. He created an alphabet of universal communication, "contemporary language to express Chilean reality in its atmosphere and essential features", as he himself expressed.
Throughout his career he held on to the idea of search, and reaffirmed that "creation and experimentation should be constant".
Vergara Grez exhibited on numerous occasions, individually and collectively, both in Chile and abroad. One of his last exhibitions held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago in 1997, a retrospective of 55 years of his work. It is a privilege for Ralli Museum Santiago to exhibit the works of the father of abstraction in Chile after his death in May 2012.
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The exhibition will remain open until July 5, 2015.
Free Entrance
Hours: Tuesday to Sunday from 10:30 to 17:00 hrs.
Phone: (56-2) 2206 42 24 | Fax: (56-2) 2206 42 32
Address: Alonso de Sotomayor 4110 Vitacura, Santiago, Chile
For more information | www.museoralli.cl
