Alejandro Otero Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Alejandro Otero
A sculpture by Alejandro Otero at Jesús Soto Museum of Modern Art
Born	March 7, 1921 El Manteco, Bolívar
Died	August 13, 1990 Caracas
Nationality	Venezuelan
Known for	geometric abstract painter, sculptor, writer, cultural promoter
Movement	Op Art, Geometric abstraction
Spouse(s)	Mercedes Pardo
Awards	1940 - First prize in the First Venezuelan Official Art Salon / 1958: Otero was awarded the National Prize for Painting in the Official Salon / 1959:represented Venezuela in the Biennale of São Paulo, receiving an honourable mention

Alejandro Otero (born March 7, 1921, in El Manteco, Bolívar, Venezuela – died August 13, 1990, in Caracas) was a famous Venezuelan artist. He was a painter, sculptor, writer, and helped promote art and culture. He was also one of the people who started the Los Disidentes group, which was important for modern art in Venezuela.

Early Life and Studies
Becoming an Abstract Artist
Public Art and Colorhythms
Later Works and Recognition
Gallery
Selected Works
See also

Early Life and Studies

Alejandro Otero studied art at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Artes Aplicadas de Caracas from 1939 to 1945. In 1940, he won his first art prize at the First Venezuelan Official Art Salon.

After finishing his studies, Otero traveled a lot. He visited New York and Paris in 1945. In Paris, he spent time studying and changing his art style, focusing on Cubism. He lived in Paris until 1952. In 1945, he also went to Washington, D.C., where he showed his early works. In 1951, he married Venezuelan artist Mercedes Pardo in London.

Becoming an Abstract Artist

While in Paris, Otero created some of his most important painting series. One of these was Las Cafeteras (The Coffee Pots), painted between 1946 and 1948. These paintings showed how his art was changing from showing real objects to becoming abstract.

When these paintings were shown in Caracas in 1949, they caused a big stir. Venezuela was quite traditional in its art at the time. This excitement actually helped new, modern art styles become popular in the country. These works became well known in 1948 at an exhibition in Washington, D.C. They helped Otero move away from Realism and begin a new period for Venezuelan painting.

In 1950, Otero traveled to the Netherlands. He wanted to see the work of Piet Mondrian, a famous artist whose style greatly influenced Otero. This led to new series of works, like Líneas de color sobre fondo blanco (Colored Lines on a White Background) from 1951. He also created Collages ortogonales (Orthogonal Collages) in 1951–52. These collages were made from colorful paper strips arranged in horizontal and vertical lines. They showed Otero experimenting with how lines and colors affect space and how we see things.

Public Art and Colorhythms

Otero returned to Caracas and was invited to work on a huge project. This project was to add art to the buildings of the Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas (University City of Caracas). This was a very modern architecture and city planning project led by architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva. Otero joined many other artists from Venezuela and other countries, like Alexander Calder and Jesús Rafael Soto. He created large public artworks for the university, including murals, stained glass windows, and Policromías (Polychromies), which were colorful facades made of glass mosaic.

Between 1955 and 1960, Otero created a special series of 75 paintings called Colorhythms. These are considered one of his most important contributions to painting. He made them using shiny industrial paint called Duco, applied with spray guns or rollers on wood or Plexiglas. The Colorhythms are large, rectangular artworks with dark vertical lines on white backgrounds. Between these lines, he added bright color markings that made the whole painting seem to move and expand.

In these works, Otero focused on rhythm and color more than shape. This created a feeling of space that was hard to define, which is typical of Op Art. Because of the bright colors and rhythmic movement, the painting seemed to spread out dynamically. With the Colorhythms, Otero showed that a flat painting could also feel like a changing space, almost like a sculpture or part of a building.

Later Works and Recognition

In 1958, Otero won the National Prize for Painting in the Official Salon. The next year, in 1959, he represented Venezuela at the São Paulo Art Biennial, where he received an honorable mention. His work is also part of the collection at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.

In the 1960s, Otero stopped painting as much and started working on larger public sculptures. One famous example is Delta Solar. He also made collages using everyday objects he found, like Page Picture No. 1. Towards the end of his life, he created many huge public art pieces in cities across the Americas. In 2012, an exhibition called Resonant Space: The Colorhythms of Alejandro Otero was shown in Brazil.