Oswaldo Vigas Oswaldo Vigas was one of the most prominent Latin American modernist artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Born in Valencia, Venezuela, in 1923, Vigas was an active member of the Parisian avant-garde art scene between 1952 and 1964, and after his return to Venezuela he played a key role in shaping the cultural life of his native country. He died in Caracas in 2014.

Drawing inspiration from a wide variety of sources—the origin of life, the Venezuelan landscape, the history and mythology of the Venezuelan people—Vigas employed a diversity of styles that served him well in his ongoing search for his mestizo identity. Cubism, surrealism, constructivism, informalism, and neo-figuration are employed in a personal way, while the artist remained true to his own convictions and created a body of work with authentic and unique images.

Vigas was inspired by great masters of Western art such as Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, and Paul Cézanne, as well as anonymous Native American and African artisans. He was the first Venezuelan artist to intertwine influences from the country’s pre-Columbian and African cultural heritage with European and American modernist trends. Especially as an important counterpoint to the purely Eurocentric tastes that dominated much of the modern Venezuelan art of his time, centered on the geometric, kinetic, and optical movements, Vigas’ work occupies a place alongside that of other prominent Latin American artists—such as Fernando de Szyzslo, Roberto Matta, Wifredo Lam, and Rufino Tamayo—who were also strongly committed to the indigenous heritage of their countries.

Vigas’s vast output encompasses painting, sculpture, printmaking, ceramics, and tapestry. His work has been shown in over a hundred solo exhibitions and is represented in numerous institutions around the world, including, in the United States, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Michigan State University Museum of Art, the OAS Museum of Art of the Americas in Washington, D.C., and the Avon Collection in New York; in France, the Jean Lurçat and Contemporary Tapestry Museum in Angers, the Angers Museum of Fine Arts, and the Reims Museum of Fine Arts; in Mexico, the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City (MAM); in Colombia, the Museum of Modern Art and the El Minuto de Dios Museum of Contemporary Art, both in Bogotá; in Peru, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lima; in Chile, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago de Chile; in Uruguay, the Ralli Museum in Punta del Este; and in numerous important private collections around the world.

• Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City (MAM), Oswaldo Vigas. Looking Inward. October 2023–February 2024
• Launch of the complete catalog raisonnéhttps://catalogue.oswaldovigas.com/• Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida. February–May 2023
• Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa. 2019
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. 2018–2019
• Grand Rapids Art Museum, Michigan. 2018
• Museum of Contemporary Art, University of São Paulo, Brazil, 2016.
• Museum of Modern Art, Bogotá, Colombia, 2015.
• Angers Museum, Angers, France, 2015.
• National Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile, 2015.
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Lima, Peru, 2014.
• Villa Tamaris Art Center, La Seyne-sur-mer, France, 2011.
• Jean Lurçat Museum and Museum of Contemporary Tapestry, Angers, France, 2005.
• Sofía Imber Museum of Contemporary Art, Caracas, Venezuela, 2002.
• La Monnaie Museum, Paris, France, 1993.