Armando Julio Reverón (Caracas May 10,1889–Caracas,September 18,1954) was the most important modernist painter of the late 19th and early 20th century in Venezuela.Most of his work was inspired by the coast,landscape and people of Macuto,located in the central coast of Venezuela,and was characterized by his view and expression of the bright luminosity of the tropic.

This volume celebrates the work of the Venezuelan artist Armando Reveron (1889-1954).Highly regarded in his native country,but still little known outside Latin America,Rever6n is perhaps the last--and,certainly,one of the most elusive--of the great early modernists to be presented to international audiences.

Rever6n studied art in his native Venezuela and then in Spain,where he discovered the work of Francisco Goya and one of his instruc-tors was Jos6 Ruiz Blasco,the father of Pablo Picasso.Back in Caracas,he participated in the Girculo de Bellas Artes,a group of young artists seeking to develop a specifically national modernism,only to move in 1921 to the coastal town of Macuto,where,over a number of years,he built a complex called E1 Castillete (The Little Castle).By the mid-1920s he had fused Post-Impressionist idioms with an extremely tac-tile surface and a bleached,almost monochromatic palette,creating his most widely celebrated,radical paintings.In the 193os he turned to making mysterious sepia-toned figure compositions,initially of sup- posedly indigenous subjects,but by the end of that decade he was using as models the uncanny life-size dolls that he made with his companion,Juanita Rios,along with a wide variety of imitation household objects.After a return to landscape painting in the early 1940s,which produced Venezuela's first depictions of the industrial landscape,Rever6n con-centrated again on figural works and,finally,on a series of extraordi-nary self-portraits surrounded by dolls.Rever6n spent the later years of his life in the seclusion of E1 Castillete,yet as his fame grew he was increasingly visited by the photographers and filmmakers who shaped his image as a new Robinson Crusoe in the Caribbean.

This very first publication on Rever6n in English accompa-nies an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in early 2007.John Elderfield gives a newly comprehensive account of the artist's devel-opment in the context of modern art,while Luis Perez-Oramas places Rever6n in relation to Latin American art.More than 100 works--paint-ings,drawings,and objects--are illustrated in the catalogue,which includes introductory texts by Nora Lawrence.An autobiographical statement by Rever6n and an interview with him,a bibliographical note,and an index conclude the publication.

The Natural History of Armando Rever6n

Armando Rever6n and Modern Art in Latin America

Catalogue

Early Works

Early Landscapes

Portraits of the 193os

Landscapes of the 194os

Fiyural Works of the 194os

Self-Portraits

Dolls and Objects

El Castillete

Autobiographical Statement

Interview with Reveron

Bibliographical Note

Acknowledgments

Works by Reveron in this Catalogue

Photograph Credits

Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art