Homage to Alejandro Otero at CAF Gallery

(Caracas, March 10, 2011).- Kinetics, abstraction and the unique use of color that characterize the work of Alejandro Otero were the reasons why CAF - Latin American development bank - and Taller de Artistas Gráficos Asociados (TAGA) (Graphic Artists Workshop), chose his works as inspiration for the XIV Luisa Palacios Miniatures Biennial, an exhibition of miniature prints on display from March 11 in the CAF Gallery, Avenida Luis Roche, Altamira in the Venezuelan capital.

"In the cultural sphere, the show also highlights the integrationist spirit that inspires us as an institution," said Enrique Garcia, CAF president & CEO, adding that he was very pleased "to open our doors to this exhibition which assembles works by 170 artists from 17 countries in America, Europe and Asia and joins similar international experiences taking place in Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Spain and Mexico."

Giving continuity to a project that promotes cultural integration through the universal expression of the graphic arts, the CAF Gallery receives for the fifth year running the TAGA biennial miniatures, with a selection of works which expresses all printmaking techniques. This year the biennial pays homage to Venezuelan artist Alejandro Otero (1921-1990), painter, sculptor, engraver, printmaker and founding member of TAGA, whose wide-ranging work is recognized internationally.

Maria Elena Ramos, art critic, said the choice of Alejandro Otero’s work "has been a specially good choice, not only because he is an artist who deals masterfully with the languages of graphic arts, but with something more sensitive and personal: his attention and enjoyment of the small and intimate, careful observer of the immediate and present, in harmony with his opening to the wide urban scales and his interest in what could be the world of the future."

Alejandro Otero, between the immense and the minimal Otero was a creative intent on the diminutive things that the world offered him, which would give his works a subtle poetry, coupled with the exhilarating force with which he knew how to indicate celestial spaces or with which he held a dialogue with the scientific development of the humanity of his time.

As Ramos has said, "the work of Otero moved between immense space and minimal places. It was his privilege to have such a passionate interest in the conquests of the science of the interstellar universe ... and in being keenly attentive to what was around his body in everyday existence."

The selection of prints by Otero, exhibited in the CAF Gallery, bring the public closer to his figurative talent and to his abstract and constructive imprint, and is a prelude to the miniatures of artists from three continents assembled in this room.

The works participating in the Biennal were rigorously selected by a highly qualified jury consisting of Malina Gallac, Solange Salazar, and Julio Pacheco Rivas - who emphasized the high quality of entries received and welcomed the international contribution to this event.

Exhibition at the CAF Gallery

The XIV Luisa Palacios Miniatures Biennial, Homage to Alejandro Otero will be open from March 11 through June.

Address: Avenida Luis Roche, CAF Torre, Altamira Open: Monday to Friday 10:00 am to 5:00 pm - Sunday 11:00 am to 3:00 pm

Admission free