Armando Reverón, the only child of a wealthy couple, was raised by a second family in Valencia, Venezuela. In Macuto, Reverón started desaturating his colour palette, creating tactile and almost monochromatic paintings. They fuse Post-Impressionism with an extremely gestural style in which the pigments, applied almost directly to the canvas, produced dry surfaces where his brushstrokes seem to float in the composition. Retrato de Alfredo Boulton (1934) depicts his friend and patron, the intellectual Alfredo Boulton. Boulton was a central voice among the generation engaged in discussions about modernising Venezuela and a frequent guest of Reverón in Macuto. He also organised Reverón’s retrospective at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas on the anniversary of his death in 1995. Recalling his visits to Macuto, Boulton wrote in the exhibition’s catalogue: “I saw him coming out of his ranch and became blinded by the landscape’s glare”.
—Laura Hakel
