Adriana Calderón (Venezuela, 1968), currently resides in the Canary Islands, Spain. Between 1987 and 1988 she studied at the Escuela de Artes Neptalí Rincón, in Maracaibo, and in 1995 she graduated as a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Universidad Francisco de Miranda, Coro.

In her pictorial work she has developed two themes, one of them, the female figure, particularly portraits, which allude to her femininity and to the faces of women who come to her memory, such as Camille Claudel and Alfonsina Storni, for example, faces of art and literature, a verbal expression that has influenced her painting, in such a way that it has inspired her to place poetic, metaphorical and even narrative titles to her artworks. And in that same stylistic practice, the other theme in which she has developed is that of nature, both flora and fauna.

In her painting we could say that some stylistic features of Fauvism are appreciated, treated in a very personal way, such as the use of the thick line of color, as well as the contrast and the chromatic expressiveness. Regarding her technique, Calderón works with acrylic on canvas, a material in which she sees better expressive possibilities in terms of color and textures.

Barquisimeto is known as the city of twilights, so it is possible that the dramatic light with which he grew up, had an emotional bond with the stroke of Villalón. The artist has confessed himself captive to Valle del Turbio and El Ávila hill, iconic symbols of geographic areas of Barquisimeto and Caracas, respectively, and that he has represented recurrently. In the natural landscape, often with wild views, the brushstroke is fast, captivating, with short strokes and color combinations, material, that trap the transience of time, creating dense and mysterious atmospheres. In many of these works, the intensity of the expression is such that the forms are decomposed. However, it is not a free abstraction sought with intention, but is the result of breaking of reality that yields to the capture of the movement. In the urban scenes, of the streets, their people and corners, there is a narrative in which the weight of the environment continues to prevail, of a certain melancholy that notices the incidence of climatic changes in the register of light and color on the shadows of the objects, in the swaying of the foliage of the trees, in the furniture, in the buildings. All elements of the composition are transformed by the keen eye of an artist who sees beyond the objective.

José Gregorio Noroño