Jacobo Borges

Place: Caracas

Born: 1931

Biography:

Jacobo Borges is a contemporary, neo-figurative Latin- American artist. His curiosity for exploring different mediums made him a painter, drawer, film director, stage designer and plastic artist. Known for his ever-evolving style, there is one constant principle that unites his work: "the search for the creation of space somewhere between dreams and reality where everything has happened, happens, and may happen." His theoretical approach and unique, innovative technique has won him acclaim all over the world. He has had solo exhibitions in France, Germany, Austria, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Britain and the United States. Today, he is considered one of the most accomplished artist of Latin America. His oeuvre includes a rich body of paintings, a film directed in 1969, and a book The Great Mountain and Its Era, published in 1979. In 1982, a biography by Dore Ashton, called Jacobo Borges, was published in English and Spanish. Jacobo Borges resides in New York City and Caracas, Venezuela. He has a wife, Diana and three children, a daughter named Ximena and two sons, one named Ezequiel and other Emiliano.
Early in his career, Jacobo Borges studied art at Escuela de Artes Plasticas y Aplicadas (School of Fine Arts) in Caracas from 1949 to 1951. His formal training was short-live, as he rebelled against the Academic style of teaching and was consequently expelled prior to graduation. This was his first and last attempt at an official education; however, it did not stop him from pursuing his career. That same year, Borges began to work at the Taller Libre de Arte (Free Art Workshop) in Caracas where he exhibited his first painting. The next year, 1952, Borges traveled to Paris on the scholarship money that he received from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer company. In Paris he began to experiment with bright, bold colors and flat shapes that resulted in the painting Fishing (1956). This work exemplifies Borges’ style during the first decade of his career - with strong influences from the Fauvism and Cubism movements. His use of a vibrant and diverse color palette is reminiscent of the Fauvists, while his fragmented composition and use of geometric forms fits into the traditional Cubist practice. The Cubist influence can be attributed to the two years that Borges had spent at the Escuela de Artes Plasticas y Aplicadas where emphasis was heavily placed on studying Cézanne and the Cubist movement. Living in Paris at the time he painted Fishing, Borges refused to experiment with different "art-trends" that were popular in European modernism. Instead, he stayed connected with his Latin roots and produced work that was "reminiscent of the Latin American indigenists, who advocated the use of themes and motifs from Indian culture." Borges was therefore often considered a naïve painter among his peers. His first works still lacked a very distinct style for which he is known today.
Upon returning to Venezuela in 1956, Borges began to develop a more neofigurative style. This was a sharp change from the prevalent Abstraction movement that tended to simplify and generalize content. Neofiguration evolved in response to Abstractionism by returning to the subjective elements of Expressionism and the use of figurative form. For Borges this was a necessary stylistic change in order to express his discontent with the political and social conditions of his country.
After ten years of the dictatorial regime of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, in 1958 Romulo Betancourt, the leader of the Democratic Action Party, regained power as the president of Venezuela. Though some of his policies supported social reforms, he also completely rejected the Castroites, which upset the Left Wing. On the other hand, the bourgeois class that made up the Right Wing completely opposed any social changes. This period of political reform had fueled and inspired many of Borges’ works produced during the early to mid 1960s, who himself sided with the Left. His politically charged art was further encouraged by the El Techo de la Ballena (The roof of the whale) movement, founded in 1961. This was a group of novelists, poets and artists, among them Jacobo Borges, that formed in response to the Venezuela's shift of power. Through their manifesto, Stripes on the Roof, and multiple art exhibitions, the group demonstrated their discontent with the new government that was still aiding the bourgeoisie.
During his early neofigurative period, Borges introduced human figures in his paintings who represented the upper class, the bourgeoisie, political or military personnel, and prostitutes. The figures were greatly distorted through the use of heavy impasto layered with rapid and rough brushwork. This technique echoed the characteristics of the Mexican artist Jose Luis Cuevas and the Argentinian Otra Figuracion movement "along with their sources in de Kooning, Bacon, Goya, Rembrandt, Posada, Orozco, the CoBrA artists as well as Emil Nolde and James Ensor." Paintings produced during this period came to be his most renown works. Based on the Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David, Borges produced a series of drawings and paintings, Characters from Napoleon's Coronation, that made a mockery of the bourgeoisie class, transforming the formal coronation scene into a "burlesque" with deformed figures.

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