MoMA demonstrates the art of diplomacy

The loan of 103 artworks for the Museum of Modern Art’s “Armando Reveron” retrospective, MoMA’s first solo exhibition dedicated to a Latin American painter in 50 years, shows that the Venezuelan government can cooperate with the U.S., at least on a cultural level.

The shipping of works by Venezuelan Modernist Reveron (1889-1954) for the show that opened in New York on Feb. 11 received the backing of the National Museums Foundation run by Hugo Chavez’s Ministry of Culture, which authorized the loan of two-thirds of the works that compose the show. The rest came from private collections.

Although it’s naive to think the loan could launch this hemisphere’s version of pingpong diplomacy, the exhibition amounts to a rare moment of concord amid frayed U.S.-Venezuelan relations, which in recent months have been characterized by nonstop invective. Leftist President Chavez routinely refers to President Bush as the devil, while Bush administration officials liken Chavez to Hitler.

“Because of the political situation, I was nervous about what it would mean for the Venezuelan state to allow a significant group of things in the national patrimony to leave for New York,” John Elderfield, MoMA’s chief curator of painting and sculpture, said in a telephone interview. He organized the show, which continues through April 16, with the Armando Reveron Project, a private Caracas-based group that assembled permission from about 30 private collectors and arranged for transportation.

“People said, ‘You are doing an exhibition with state works from Venezuela; you must be joking,’ ” Elderfield said. “But the foundation was great. In the end they gave us everything we wanted, even let me go back and add a few things after I’d made the initial selection.”

Given the tense relations between the socialist Chavez government and the moneyed classes here -- Chavez commonly refers to them as “the squalid ones” -- some Reveron collectors, who include Venezuela’s wealthiest families, were concerned that letting the works leave the country might leave them open to confiscation or taxes, sources said.

Among the 30 private lenders to the show is Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, whose foundation owns an extensive collection of Reverons (her aunt posed for one of his better-known paintings) and works by other Latin American artists. She is the wife of one of Latin America’s wealthiest media tycoons, Gustavo Cisneros, and is also on the MoMA board of directors. MoMA has received some criticism since the opening that it might have selected a different painter for its first Latin American solo show in 50 years. And others have speculated that the show is in appreciation for Patricia Cisneros’ support. A museum spokeswoman said, however, that Cisneros had nothing to do with planning or funding the exhibition.

Politics aside, the show undoubtedly has raised consciousness both at home and abroad of Reveron, who previously had received only one solo U.S. show, a traveling exhibition shortly after his death. At the newly expanded National Art Gallery here, the 70 Reveron paintings and objects will soon receive an expanded new space of their own. The New York show is also a source of tremendous pride for the Caracas arts community.

“Finally, after so many years of waiting, Venezuelans have reason to weep with joy. We have Reveron in the MoMA,” wrote Beatriz Sogbe in last week’s issue of Zeta newsmagazine. Juan Ignacio Parra, the Reveron Project president, said in an interview that the MoMA show “gives Reveron’s art its rightful place in global modernity.”

MoMA-goers whose perceptions of Latin American painting are founded on the folkloric styles of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Fernando Botero will have a surprise in store. Reveron’s white-on-white figurative paintings are highly original, even eccentric, with no clear stylistic antecedents. The show, which surveys 30 years of the artist’s most important production through drawings, paintings and objects, includes near-abstract studies of Caribbean landscapes, voluptuous nudes and straightforward treatments of the La Guaira port.

“He is unique in art history, and that’s the whole point of the exhibition,” said Gabriela Rangel, director of visual arts for the Americas Society in New York. “He was a pioneer of modernity.”

Reveron was born into Caracas high society and studied in Paris, Madrid and Barcelona, where he took classes from Picasso’s father. Upon his return to Venezuela in 1915, he took up with a group of Caracas artists who emulated the plein-air landscape style of France.

But soon Reveron rebelled and embarked on his own style. Elderfield describes it as “a form of impressionism ... that doesn’t deliver in a five-second look. You have to give it time and wait for imagery to appear.” Among his best known works are the landscapes bathed in the Caribbean’s blinding light.

In the oddest turn, Reveron painted portraits of himself and others that included life-size dolls (munecas) that he and his companion, Juanita Rios, had made. The dolls served as both models and a sort of extended family.

The significance of the dolls, several of which are included in the exhibition, has been debated by critics and biographers. Reveron spent the last half of his life as a semi-recluse on the beach of Macuto, 30 miles north of Caracas, where he built a mini-castle to keep the world out and where he cultivated the image of a bohemian Robinson Crusoe.

“He was clearly a loner, and this is one of the wonderful things, that he was someone able to create amazing works without much contact with the outside world,” Elderfield said.

But Reveron was also a shrewd marketer of his work and sold paintings directly to Caracas high society.

Many of his customers visited the eccentric artist at his seaside compound, where he dressed like a native. He battled schizophrenia most of his adult life and was institutionalized on several occasions.

Venezuela’s landslides of December 1999, which devastated its Caribbean coast and killed at least 10,000 people, also wiped out the compound, although the artworks and dolls kept there at the time of his death had long since been moved to the National Gallery in Caracas. Now with renewed interest in Reveron, some favor rebuilding the compound to honor Venezuela’s most famous painter.

Others, such as Reveron Project President Parra, say such a reconstruction would amount to “an inorganic re-creation , a theme park.”

Given MoMA’s importance in the art world, the show could well raise the profile of other Latin American Modernists who, Elderfield acknowledges, generally are underappreciated. “It seems we’ve missed a beat,” Elderfield said, saying the museum may have become too Europe- and U.S.-centric, evidenced by the fact that Reveron is the first Latin American painter to be showcased at MoMA since Chilean Roberto Matta in 1957.

Rangel, of the Americas Society, said there are at least half a dozen other Latin American 20th century artists worthy of similar attention, including Joaquin Torres Garcia of Uruguay, Tarsila do Amaral of Brazil and Wilfredo Lam of Cuba, to name a few.

Elderfield, who has mounted epochal Matisse, Bonnard and Schwitters shows during his 30-year career at MoMA, first saw Reveron’s work at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1998, where, he said, the Venezuelan’s works floored him.

“I thought, I have to pay attention to this.” Subsequent trips to Caracas to view more Reverons convinced him that the artist deserved a solo show.

Originally set to open in 2004, the 50th anniversary of Reveron’s death, the exhibition was delayed by strained U.S.-Venezuelan relations and by the opening of the remodeled MoMA in 2004, for which Elderfield had to reinstall the collection.

Expectations that South American art will receive more attention at MoMA in coming years were boosted by the hiring of Luis Perez-Oramas as its first full-time curator of Latin American art. Perez-Oramas, who is Venezuelan and a founding member of the Reveron Project, formerly was consultant to the Fundacion Cisneros in Caracas.

Elderfield said MoMA will mount a group show of Latin American artists in the fall and is considering another solo show of works by a Latin American artist: “I won’t say of which artist. I’ll start getting calls.”

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chris.kraul@latimes.com

Times special correspondent Mery Mogollon contributed to this report.