Henrique Faria On Venezuelan Art and Cultural Persistence

Installation view: Alfredo Boulton’s “The Eyes Of Venezuela” at Henrique Faria in 2024. Photo: Arturo Sánchez

As people turn their attention toward Venezuela and its art scene in the wake of the capture of former strongman Nicolás Maduro and the United States’ takeover of Venezuela’s oil economy, it’s worth remembering that the country’s artists haven’t been working in a vacuum these past many years. Dealer Henrique Faria owns one of the galleries that has served as a dedicated bridge between the country and the broader international art world.

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Faria’s eponymous gallery opened in New York in 2001, focusing primarily on Latin American geometric abstraction and work by modern masters, conceptual and contemporary artists. In 2007, the gallery ventured into the still little-known terrain of Latin American conceptual practices, with a particular focus on artists from Venezuela and Argentina. “In terms of Latin American galleries in New York, we are one of the few that has consistently worked with Venezuelan artists—possibly the only one. We were also the first gallery from Venezuela ever to be accepted into Art Basel Miami,” Faria tells Observer.

He was born in Venezuela and grew up there during the 1970s, in a period of remarkable prosperity. “The country had developed a highly educated elite, very smart and very sophisticated, which is why museums in the 1960s and 1970s were extraordinary—truly glorious—in their collecting across Latin America,” he recalls. “Mexico was important, Argentina was important, perhaps Peru as well, but none reached the level of Venezuela in terms of variety and sophistication. And just as important was the breadth of collecting in Venezuela at the time.” As a teenager, he visited friends’ homes and encountered works by Picasso, Jean Dubuffet, Juan Gris, Wilfredo Lam and Francis Bacon—entire collections of some of the most significant figures of modern art in private houses. “We grew up surrounded by art. It was part of everyday life.”

At the same time, there was strong institutional support for Venezuelan artists who wanted to travel to Europe for education, something reinforced under President Carlos Andrés Pérez. One of the key figures behind this effort was Leopoldo López Gil, the father of Leopoldo López, who directed the Fundación Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho. This is how Venezuela developed its own voice within postwar modernism, through the so-called “Dissidents” of the 1950s—artists such as Carlos Cruz-Diez, Aimée Battistini,

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