Juan González Bolívar was born in Cúpira (1978). He lived his childhood and adolescence in Maturín, where he studied at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas Eloy Palacios. Later, he graduated with a degree in Plastic Arts from the Instituto Universitario de Estudios Superiores de Artes Plásticas Armando Reverón-Iuesapar, in Caracas, Venezuela.

González Bolívar’s pictorial discourse is subtle, and at the same time, it harbors a powerful sensory and emotional content. His artwork could be registered within the genre of landscape painting, inheriting the tradition of Armando Reverón in the treatment of light and the subjectivity of the landscape. The artist solves and plastically interprets the landscape in a very personal and intimate way, and his images have been linked to the representation of memory by many authors and by the artist himself: “One has to paint from oneself, from what one feels and what one loves, from what is lived and remembered”.

The compositions in his works are usually constructed as a puzzle, based on what appear to be fragments, patches, and darned scraps. The way of composing is the way of remembering: the pieces of paint, textures, materials are integrated, just like memories in memory itself.

We observe a synthesis of elements and shapes, almost exclusively stains and thin and faint lines that draw trees of simple configuration are revealed to us. Both the motive and the genuine nature of these stains and lines can take us back to his remote childhood, in rural spaces, they lead us to memories that seem to be so far away in time, that they are diffused, blurred environments are generated, which seem to fade. There is in them a visuality typical of remembrances. His color palette is dominated by cold tones, which also contribute to the particular nostalgic atmosphere of González Bolívar’s interpretation and representation of the landscape.

Ana Beatriz García