José Caldas
For José Caldas (San Cristóbal, Venezuela, 1953) painting has color as the absolute medium to express visual and energetic situations.
After observing the sunset of a landscape in the East of the country and watching the sunrise, the desire was born to externalize the pleasant sensation that he had experienced. He had always liked writing, but he could not capture the essence of what he had felt. He approaches painting by chance, after seeing many artworks hanging on the wall in the house of a valued friend, which left him the restlessness of communicating through the image. This friend was the painter Evelio Giuseppe. He received classes from him, as well as from Alejandro Ríos and Jorge Chacón, locally known artists, who had the wisdom to properly guide his qualities. While Carlos Cruz-Diez and Armando Reverón are considered by him as masters of painting; the first one for the handling of color and the second one, for understanding light as a phenomenological act. Although he began to have a presence in the Venezuelan art scene in the eighties, it was from the nineties that his work began to be recognized.
