Armando Reverón (1889 – 1954 Caracas, Venezuela) is considered by the international art world to be one of the most important painters of the Caribbean and one of the greatest representatives of the modernity of the American continent. He entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Caracas in 1908 to study. In 1911 he traveled to Spain and enrolled in the School of Arts and Crafts in Barcelona and in 1912 in the San Fernando Academy in Madrid.

Once back in Venezuela in 1913, he came into contact with the painters of the Circle of Fine Arts (1912–1917) and the so-called Caracas School (1920–1950). These artists broke with the rigidity of academic painting under the influence of Impressionism. For many of these painters, the Cerro el Ávila, part of the city’s valley, became the central and distinctive theme of their aesthetic proposals.

In 1920, Reverón settled in Macuto, located on the central coast of the country, facing the mountain to devote his life to the dazzling light of the Caribbean. There, he built his home with his own hands, El castillete, a separate universe where he painted incessantly, made his dolls that would serve as models, and performed his “eccentricities” for his visitors: artists, people from the culture, and representatives of the upper class, who anticipated the happenings for more than 20 years.

Although, different periods have been established in the work of our artist based on the chromaticism of his canvases: the blue period (1919 – 1924), the white (1925 – 1937), the sepia (1937 – 1949) and, finally, a period of crayons and charcoal. Reverón will always remain an enigma that transcends classifications, comparisons and even systematic studies. His was an tirelessly struggle with the epidermis of the tropics and the baroque skeleton he inherited from Europe. 

The real one poetic information That his work represents for history goes beyond a style, a technique, or a singular and extravagant way of creating. It is a absence, the one that exposes his canvases and blurs his works; the one that we, as spectators, try to fill in precisely. Endless metamorphosis is his painting, where the warm mortar that contains the elements of our coasts seems to give way, wrapped in the corrosive saltpeter of the waves, again and again.