138 - ENRICO ARMAS (Caracas, 1957).

ENRICO ARMAS (Caracas, 1957). “The Dream of the Angels,” 2016. Acrylic on canvas. No stretcher frame. Signed in the lower right corner. Signed, dated, and titled on the back. Dimensions: 71 x 104 cm. This work is part of Enrico Armas’s characteristic figurative-abstract expressionist style, in which gestural freedom and chromatic intensity are combined with figurative references and symbolic elements. The artist employs a vibrant palette, dominated by yellows, blues, and reds, which intertwine through energetic brushstrokes, overlays, and seemingly spontaneous graphic elements. The composition incorporates some of the recurring motifs of his artistic universe, such as wheels, symbols, and barely suggested silhouettes, which emerge and dissolve among the different layers of color. Far from representing literal subjects, these elements construct a personal, evocative imaginary world in which figuration and abstraction coexist in a dynamic balance. A painter and sculptor, the son of writer Alfredo Armas Alfonzo—winner of the 1969 National Prize for Literature—and enamel artist Aída Armas, Enrico Armas began exhibiting his work in his hometown, Caracas, at the young age of 16. In 1978, he received a scholarship from the French government to study sculpture and printmaking at the School of Decorative Arts in Nice, as well as at the School of Fine Arts in Paris. He continued his career in Venezuela, furthering his studies at Cegra and holding his first exhibition at the Arte Hoy Gallery in Caracas in 1992. He has devoted part of his body of work to creating large-scale sculptures exhibited in public spaces, such as his “Monumento al Hierro,” with which he won the Fundametal competition for a monumental piece (Valencia, Carabobo State, 1983). Armas has had more than 70 solo exhibitions and 200 group exhibitions, and his work is represented in the Museum of Culture, the National Art Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Arturo Michelena Museum in Caracas, among many others. It no longer has a stretcher frame.