Pérez–Oramas, Luis 1960- (Luis Enrique Pérez–Oramas)

PERSONAL:

Born 1960, in Venezuela.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St., New York, NY 10019-5497.

CAREER:

Writer, poet, and art historian. Curator for the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, Caracas, Venezuela, 1995-2003; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, adjunct curator, 2003-06, Estrellita Brodsky curator of Latin American art, 2006—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Monte Avila Poetry Award, 1983, for Salmos y Boleros de la casa; Henrique Otero Vizcarrondo Award for best op-ed piece published in El Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela, 2006.

WRITINGS:

Poemas, Editorial Arte (Caracas, Venezuela), 1978.

Salmos y Boleros de la casa, Monte Avila Editores (Caracas, Venezuela), 1986.

Armando Reverón, de los prodigios de la luz a los trabajos del arte, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Sofia Imber (Caracas, Venezuela), 1990.

La década impensable y otros escritos fechados, Museo Jacobo Borges (Caracas, Venezuela), 1996.

(With Ariel Jimenez) La Invención de la Continuidad: Arte Venezolano Contemporáneo 1967-1997, Galeria de Arte Nacional de Venezuela (Caracas, Venezuela), 1997.

La cocina de Jurassic Park y otros ensayos visuales, Fundación Polar (Caracas, Venezuela), 1998.

Gacelas y otros poemas, Editorial Goliardos (Caracas, Venezuela), 1999.

Arte Contemporaneo Venezolano en la Colección Cisneros, 1990-2004, Fundación Cisneros (Caracas, Venezuela), 2004.

La construcción de un personage. Imágenes de Armando Reverón, Proyecto Armando Reverón (Caracas, Venezuela), 2004.

Gego: Anudamientos, Fundación Gego-Sala Mendoza (Caracas, Venezuela), 2004.

An Atlas of Drawings: Transforming Chronologies, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 2006.

(With John Elderfield) Armando Reverón, D.A.P., 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Luis Pérez-Oramas is a writer and art historian who is a prominent figure at the prestigious Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY, where he serves as curator of Latin American art. This position was created especially for Pérez-Oramas in 2006, with resources from the Estrellita B. Brodsky Endowment Fund of Latin American Art, noted a writer on IBLNews. Pérez-Oramas's association with the Museum of Modern Art reflects his "intention of achieving greater integration of Latin American art in the collection of modern art in the world," commented the IBLNews reporter. Before coming to New York from Caracas, Venezuela, Pérez-Oramas was curator of a retrospective of the works of Venezuelan painter Armando Reverón (1889-1954), and served as curator of the collection of Patricia Phelps Cisneros, a member of the Administrative Councils and the International Museum of Modern Art.

Pérez-Oramas has been active with Reverón's art in other venues, as well. He was curator, with John Elderfield, of an exhibition of Reverón's work that was mounted at the Museum of Modern Art in early 2007. Armando Reverón, written with Elderfield, is the printed catalogue of the exhibition. The catalogue "offers a fine introduction in English to Venezuela's most noted Twentieth-Century artist," commented Library Journal critic John Hagood. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue "introduces the work of one of Latin America's most important early modernists to an international audience," commented a writer on the Museum of Modern Art Web site. Many of Reverón's works "have a highly tactile quality that shows they are more than simply perceptual paintings." During this period of his artistic life, he "began painting on old flour sacks and using homemade paintbrushes that he assembled from bamboo twigs, pencils, and animal bones, all covered with nubs of burlap," reported the Museum of Modern Art Web site writer. Reverón was also noted for the life-size dolls he created and used as models, and for other nonfunctioning artistic objects that he created in the 1940s. The exhibition and catalogue cover Reverón's distinctive creative periods, including the blue period, which started in 1916; the white period of the 1920s and 1930s; and the sepia period of the 1940s. Pérez-Oramas and Elderfield include informative essays, biographical notes, explanations of Reverón's working methods, and an extensive bibliography covering the artist's life and works. With this book, Pérez-Oramas "expands the geography—and lexicon—of modernist art," Hagood concluded.

Pérez-Oramas also contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue An Atlas of Drawings: Transforming Chronologies, for which Pérez-Oramas also served as curator.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

ARTnews, February, 2007, "MoMA Creates New Curatorial Post," p. 57.

Choice, April, 2007, J.T. Frazer, review of An Atlas of Drawings: Transforming Chronologies, p. 1331.

Library Journal, June 1, 2007, John Hagood, review of Armando Reverón, p. 115.

Reference & Research Book News, August, 2007, review of An Atlas of Drawings.

ONLINE

IBLNews,http://www.iblnews.com/ (December 18, 2006), "The Art Historian Luis Pérez-Oramas Visit the MoMA Works to Integrate Latin America," profile of Luis Pérez-Oramas.

Museum of Modern Art Web site,http://moma.org/ (February 4, 2008), "MoMA Presents First North American Retrospective of Armando Reverón, an Early Modernist from Venezuela."

[Sketch reviewed by Geaninne Gutierrez-Guimaraes, Curatorial Assistant for the Department of Drawings at The Museum of Modern Art.]