Armando Villalon
Valle

About the Item

Few artists in Venezuela have the fortune of the affection and the overwhelming admiration of the city that saw them born, like the one expressed by Barquisimeto and the Barquisimetanos by the maestro Jesús Armando Villalón. Born in the capital of the state Lara on July 6, 1945 into an emerging middle-class family, the now renowned landscaper ventured into the visual arts as a father of a family and after having built a solid economic and employment stability, thanks to your business skills. However, these well-deserved achievements, the product of his work and effort to ensure the well-being of his family, did not dampen his deepest youthful desires to be a painter. Around the age of 30, in 1974, he began his formal preparation in the plastic arts by enrolling in the art workshop of the master Ramón Díaz Lugo, one of the most consistent disciples of the master Rafael Monasterios, who is considered part of the precursors of the landscape movement in Venezuela at the beginning of the 20th century. Almost immediately the young Villalón showed extraordinary qualities to recreate the landscape. Disciplined in his lessons, but without compromising his plastic convictions, he quickly managed to define his own style characterized by the strong and short stroke, widely inspired by the Impressionist masters of Europe, whose work he had the opportunity to study in depth thanks to the indissoluble support of his wife Ysabel, who along with her two young children, did not hesitate to embark with the artist on his journey to complement his artistic training in the old continent. In 1981, the master Villalón arrived in the Spanish capital, where he took drawing and painting classes at the prestigious Arjona Studio and at the Serigraphy and Engraving Workshop in Madrid. By then, the work of the "Pintor del Turbio" was widely known in the main cities of Venezuela: Caracas, Valencia, Maracay, Maracaibo and of course his native Barquisimeto, where he had conquered prestigious galleries and exhibition centers. But once again, his natural dissatisfaction led him away from the comfort of fame, to continue his insatiable search for excellence, a journey that had begun in Spain with the meticulous study of the Impressionists, especially the Iberian painters Joaquín Sorolla and Joaquín Mir, whose work a captive confesses during this stage of his life. The instructive experience in Europe was completed by his brief but intense passage through Paris, London, Rome, Munich and Amsterdam, always in the footsteps of the great masters of universal art. Again in Venezuela, in the mid-1980s, he managed to mature his line. And after arduous inquiries about the shades of light in the successive 30 years, the master Villalón manages to establish himself as an award-winning creator of atmospheres. His palette is as chromatic as it is genuine, which is why it was quickly attacked by critics and collectors with the title: "Painter of the Mist." As expected, the overwhelming scenes of indecipherable firmaments or the intoxicating accumulation of sensations generated by its closed spaces, did not take long to arouse the interest of galleries, museums and exhibition halls throughout the country. The conquests of these spaces and in the specific artistic confrontations in which he decided to participate, because he never saw himself as a prize hunter, vindicated the landscape in the national plastic scene and beyond his latitudes. A restless and persevering researcher, the master Villalón constantly innovates and does not settle easily. His work is the result of a disciplined, formal and planned work that has guaranteed him the plastic coherence necessary to be exalted as a Master. His four decades of experience make him a benchmark of national contemporary art and an ambassador of the Venezuelan landscape today, when his work is widely desired and valued in other countries, mainly the United States.

Creator:

Armando Villalon (1945, Spanish)

Dimensions:

Height: 23.5 in (59.69 cm)Width: 31.4 in (79.76 cm)

Medium:

Mixed Media

Movement & Style:

Modern

Period:

20th Century

Condition:

Gallery Location: