Venezuela Built a Cultural Powerhouse—And Its Art World Refuses to Disappear

Venezuela is home to the world’s largest reserves of oil and gold, hence today’s geopolitical focus on the country, but for decades, it was also one of the most vibrant international centers of artistic and cultural life. That is, until much of its intellectual, creative and collecting class was gradually forced into exile, first under the Chávez regime and later during the continued rule of President Nicolás Maduro. They are among the more than 7 million Venezuelans who have migrated in response to ongoing economic and political crises, with the vast majority leaving during Maduro’s tenure. Yet many others stayed and continued—resiliently—to open exhibitions, work in museums and galleries and, perhaps most importantly, make art.

For days now, I have been gathering stories and voices from Venezuela’s artistic and cultural community, both within the country and in the diaspora. As an Italian who has long moved through the international art world, I’ve been in close contact with many Venezuelans—dear friends—who share the pain of distance alongside the enduring hope of return. I wanted to center the human side of what’s unfolding through the lens of art, at a time when global attention is on oil and the larger games of political and economic power. The word that comes to mind is resilience, paired with a clear awareness of what Venezuela’s cultural scene once was and what it continues to be. Thank you to all who have shared so generously. I will shape this work into chapters that move across time, context and voice. This first chapter feels like the necessary beginning: a look back at what Caracas was—and at those who still hope for its return to the artistic and cultural splendor it once reached, built on a belief in culture-led development that continues to resonate globally.

Venezuela’s postwar golden period: art as public infrastructure

In the immediate postwar years, Caracas shone as an international art hub. At the start of the 20th Century, Venezuela was largely agrarian and politically unstable. But the discovery and export of vast oil reserves transformed both its economy and its state institutions. By the mid-20th Century, Venezuela had become one of the world’s leading oil producers, fueling rapid urbanization and, for long stretches, political stability and relative prosperity compared with many of its neighbors.

Although the country increasingly became a rentier economy—overly dependent on oil exports, with weak productive diversification and deepening corruption that would later pave the way for Chávez’s attempted military coup—it was during this period (1958-1990) that the state used oil revenues not only to fund industrialization, social programs and infrastructure but also to embed culture directly into the nation-building project.

Extractive revenues were invested in architecture, universities, museums, public art and cultural patronage—treating culture as public infrastructure for the future. In 1974, internationally acclaimed kinetic artist Carlos Cruz-Diez designed the chromatic floor environment at Simón Bolívar International Airport, transforming a transit space into a perceptual experience. As early as the 1970s—well ahead of comparable developments elsewhere—the stations of the Metro de Caracas featured integrated works by Jesús Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez and Alejandro Otero, reinforcing the idea that abstraction could inhabit mass public space as a way to reimagine relationships between people, place and the future.

Museums, universities, theaters, orchestras and public art commissions were supported as civic infrastructure, reflecting a pioneering belief that cultural investment was key to national development and international influence—placing art and culture at the center of the political agenda, not unlike what we see today in parts of the Gulf. Venezuela anticipated this model early on and, crucially, never stopped believing in it—shaping an entire generation of artists and collectors with few equals in the region or beyond at the time.

This cultural flourishing did not emerge in a vacuum. As New York-based, Venezuelan-born dealer Henrique Faria emphasized in conversation, the country had long been dominated by a small group of landowning elites. Many were educated in Europe, particularly France, and belonged to a highly cultured class deeply connected to European intellectual life—especially in Paris, which, between the 1920s and 1940s, stood as the global center of art and the avant-gardes. This transatlantic connection predated the postwar exodus and laid the groundwork for the extraordinary flowering of Venezuelan culture in the 1960s and 1970s, when the country consolidated one of the most sophisticated art scenes in Latin America.

One of the masterpieces that best embodies the spirit of that era is the Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas, now recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site. “When the Universidad Central was built, that moment really consolidated the integration of art into Caracas,” recalls Faria. Conceived by Carlos Raúl Villanueva as a true synthesis of the arts, the campus permanently integrated works by a select group of Venezuelan artists alongside internationally renowned masters, including Alexander Calder, Fernand Léger, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Wifredo Lam and Victor Vasarely. Calder’s Floating Clouds, engineered as an acoustic ceiling for the Aula Magna, remain one of the high points of his ability to merge organic abstraction with architecture, sound and space. Inaugurated in 1954, the UCV formed part of a larger wave of national university projects across Latin America, each intended to send a clear message to the world: We are modern, and, like the French, we have our own Cité universitaire.

Venezuelan artists Jesús Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez and Alejandro Otero—as well as internationally celebrated figures such as Gego—actively participated in this project. Many were part of the so-called dissidents, a generation of artists who received state support to study in Europe. Inspired by early avant-garde movements but extending their vision into the public realm, their kinetic, optical and chromatic abstraction was understood as a democratic visual language—one that bypassed literacy, ideology and class to activate collective imagination and reshape how citizens perceived space, movement and one another.

Caracas emerged as one of the leading laboratories of Modernism in Latin America, anticipating—and in many ways exceeding—the ambitions later crystallized in Brasília. “When we were children, you could go to friends’ houses and see Picassos, Juan Gris, Francis Bacon,” Faria recalls of growing up in Caracas in the 1970s. “None in Latin America was at the level of sophistication—and most importantly, the breadth of collecting—that Venezuela had at the time.” He even remembers a collector couple who built the most extensive Morandi collection in Latin America, later attempting to donate it to a state no longer willing—or able—to accept it.

Standing as a testament to this golden era of international exchange is Villa Planchart, designed by Gio Ponti for Anala and Armando Planchart on a hill overlooking Caracas. Now regarded as a manifesto of Tropical Modernism, the house was conceived as a total work of art—from custom furniture to ceramics. Envisioned by Ponti as a “machine to be lived in,” it plays with light, geometry and open space while achieving a seamless integration with the landscape, in dialogue with contemporaneous works by Frank Lloyd Wright.

But the major milestone that solidified Venezuela’s position in the international art community came in 1974, when, under the visionary leadership of cultural figure and journalist Sofía Ímber, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas opened its doors. Built in a transformed auto parts shop, the museum quickly evolved into one of Latin America’s premier institutions, with a remarkable collection of more than 4,000 works by Venezuelan modernists alongside international figures including Picasso, Joan Miró, Bacon and Calder.

Venezuelan-born, New York-based art advisor Maria Brito recalls how formative the museum and its collection were to her early relationship with art. Her grandfather had been a major collector whose passion passed to her father, who was closely connected to the Venezuelan avant-garde. She remembers visiting Jesús Rafael Soto’s studio as a child and seeing her first Rauschenberg at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo. “I used to go to the museum, which was absolutely wonderful,” she says, acknowledging how her sensitivity to art likely began with those early aesthetic encounters.

Venezuelan artist Johan Galue, still based in Caracas, also remembers the country’s cultural scene as though opening an album that smells of fresh oil paint. “It’s not just about thinking back to what once existed, but about what shaped me, what made me feel that I, too, was part of something bigger: a community of creators who breathed art into every corner,” he shared with Observer.

I also spoke briefly with Sofía Ímber’s daughter, Adriana Mesenes. Before her birth in 1959, she explained, her parents lived in Europe for nearly a decade, moving between Belgium and France. It was during that period that her mother met Picasso. “He was already well known by then, and we even have photographs of her with Picasso,” she notes, confirming how deeply embedded her parents were in the international art scene. Those connections later enabled Ímber to secure exceptional works for Caracas’s new museum, once the state allocated acquisition funds. Ímber was a true connector—intuitive, tireless and effective. “She had something really special: her personality was incredible, and she had an extraordinary way with people,” Adriana recalls. “She was very deliberate in how she connected with them, and I think she had a kind of magic touch. She attended every fair and every gallery. She worked relentlessly to secure the very best prices for Venezuela.” Over the years, many other significant works entered public collections through private families and collectors.

Around the same time, a pioneering program supporting Venezuelan artists abroad was strengthened under President Carlos Andrés Pérez and led by Leopoldo López’s father through Fundación Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho. The initiative enabled many Venezuelans to pursue studies overseas and attain high levels of education. Throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, Venezuelans traveled widely and were deeply immersed in international art and culture.

As Mesenes recalls, many internationally recognized artists were regular visitors to Venezuela. She remembers Rauschenberg visiting their home, and how extraordinary it was to listen to him talk. Around eleven each night, he would have a Scotch on the rocks. “For us, it all felt completely normal. We didn’t think much of it because it was just our everyday life. Writers, musicians, artists—fine artists—were always around. People would come to the house, eat with us and stay with us.” That story alone deserves a separate piece.

When things started to change

Back to reality: since 1999, following Chávez’s gradual shift toward authoritarian rule, many of these cultural institutions have fallen into prolonged neglect. Venezuelan museums became almost entirely reliant on state funding, stripped of the autonomy to manage their finances or seek private support. As inflation soared past 10 million percent, government contributions became effectively worthless, leaving staff with symbolic salaries and institutions operating in unsafe and inhumane conditions. As New York-based Venezuelan lawyer Denise Rodríguez Dao reported in her Substack, The Incurable Humanist, she witnessed the collapse firsthand before being forced to leave the country after her father’s assassination.

“During my internship at the Contemporary Art Museum of Caracas (2017-2018), I witnessed this collapse firsthand: non-functional fire extinguishers, no air conditioning, minimal security and artworks deteriorating from humidity and fungus,” she writes. “Despite this, longtime employees showed up every day out of pure devotion to art, earning salaries that couldn’t cover a single day’s meals.”

In 2001, Chávez publicly dismissed Sofía Ímber during a live radio broadcast, accusing her of elitism and purging her and the museum’s entire board, replacing them with political loyalists. In 2017, under Maduro, the museum was renamed after Armando Reverón. “Posters warned, ‘Aquí no se habla mal de Chávez.’” Employees lacked money for transportation. One colleague took his own life, unable to pay basic bills. Many relied on CLAP food boxes, Rodríguez Dao wrote. These experiences shaped her understanding of art, law and politics, and later informed her master’s thesis at Christie’s Education, which was dedicated to the legacy of Sofía Ímber and Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and their role in shaping the fate of Venezuelan art through their vision and collecting practice.

While the Cisneros collection is perhaps the most widely known for its contribution to repositioning Latin American modernism within global art history, it is far from the only story. Many other Venezuelan collectors, patrons, artists and cultural professionals now living abroad have long hoped for the day they might return home.

Around the same time, a pioneering program supporting Venezuelan artists abroad was expanded under President Carlos Andrés Pérez and led by Leopoldo López’s father through Fundación Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho. The program enabled many Venezuelans to pursue studies overseas and receive a world-class education. Throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, Venezuelans traveled widely and remained deeply immersed in international art and culture.

A similar memory of Venezuela at the moment of collapse was shared by Venezuelan-born, now Miami-based artist Bernadette Despujols, recalling her last visit to the country in 2018 for a solo show at Cerquone Projects. “At that point, Caracas was extremely dangerous, and there was a severe food shortage. It was awful. Things improved slightly later, but at the time, it was very harsh,” she says, remembering how she brought toilet paper and shampoo from her hotel to give to her cousins. At the opening, there was only one bottle of whiskey to share, and the entire budget went toward hiring two security guards. The curator did not attend—her home had been robbed the day before.

Despujols’s work focuses on portraits and faces of Venezuelan people, reflecting identity from multiple vantage points: those who have left, those who remain and those suspended between memory and longing. Her recent work draws on images sent by photojournalist Federico Ríos, who documented Venezuelans crossing the Darién Gap. She describes these migrants as silent heroes, whose journeys expose the scale of Venezuela’s crisis while also embodying its resilience. “I’m in my studio, looking at these photographs, and they’re just devastating,” she says. “At the same time, I try to balance that with the happiness and joy in my own life. I’m a mother, I’m happy and I don’t want everything to revolve solely around pain… I think that impulse—to bring joy even into the hardest moments—is also very Venezuelan.”

According to local curator Humberto Valdivieso, contemporary Venezuelan art has been shaped by what he describes as an estremecimiento—a profound shudder marking both its aesthetic and social dimensions. “The country’s unending crisis, echoed in much of the world, has deprived artists of stable referents: landscapes, bodies, times and identities have become fleeting gestures,” he reflects. “Venezuela exists both within and beyond its geopolitical territory; ours is a wandering nationality.” This condition, he argues, has rendered Venezuelan artists nomadic, with heterogeneous practices that cannot be separated from the country’s fractured reality.

Adriana Meneses, who had just returned to Caracas in September, described the city’s cultural institutions in a slightly improved state, a view confirmed by several other sources. Following articles in The New York Times and El País denouncing the post-pandemic degradation of key museums, the government had begun taking steps toward restoration. Teatro Teresa Carreño, a cultural landmark in Caracas, was among the first to be restored, followed by renovations of public sculptures and key museums within the city’s public parks. Efforts extended to the Galería de Arte Nacional, the Museo Alejandro Otero, and the Carlos Cruz-Diez Foundation, which resumed activity. Sala Mendoza, a private foundation that, as Faria notes, has consistently staged exhibitions over the years—particularly now—also remains active.

Another person on the ground in Caracas also confirmed that things had started to shift. Even if museum programming may no longer match the level of the past—and no international exhibitions have been staged there in years, largely due to insurance constraints and the risks involved in mounting major shows under current conditions—the fact that the state has begun to pay attention is seen by many as a meaningful first step.

Meneses echoed this sentiment, sharing her surprise at the abundance of cultural activity she encountered during her most recent visit. She recalled attending several exhibition openings last September, along with concerts and other events. “I was really impressed by how many openings and cultural events were happening. It felt incredible. People said the commercial side was very difficult—that selling work was hard and everything felt frozen in time—but the openings themselves were packed. They were incredibly crowded. People were eager to go out, to see each other, to see what was happening.” Venezuelan and Paris-based artist Elias Crespin had just opened a major show that week, which drew thousands of attendees, according to Meneses.

“There’s a deep understanding of art that stays with you,” echoes Faria, explaining why Venezuelans connect so easily with art and why international galleries and art fairs have engaged with the country for decades, bringing artists from around the world. “That history still matters,” he emphasizes.

“There was even an internal joke that all Venezuelans are photographers, or that all Venezuelans are artists,” says Juliana Sorondo, a young Venezuelan expat who now runs her gallery, Sorondo Projects, from Barcelona. “We’ve always been deeply connected to the idea that making art is necessary, that it’s part of the culture. When I was growing up, it was very common to ask kids what they wanted to be and hear answers like, ‘I want to be a fireman,’ but also, very naturally, ‘I want to be an artist.’ It was part of our identity.”

Sorondo sees it as essential to remember that Venezuelan artists are present, active and speaking through practices that span continents—not only in Venezuela but also across the diaspora formed by those who left in search of a better future. “I just hope to contribute, and I take this responsibility very seriously,” she notes, describing Sorondo Projects’ intentionally nuanced political and educational approach to showing the diversity and complexity of Venezuelan and Latino culture today—not only in her gallery space, but also through participation in international fairs. “The continuity of our lives—of Venezuelan life—was disrupted, but for those of us who were lucky enough to find work abroad, many of us tried to stay true to who we are,” she says. “We kept talking about identity. We kept trying to stay connected to Venezuela in some way.”

An art scene that never wavered

Even during the darkest moments, artists persevered. As the founder of Caracas-based gallery Abra—one of the few in Venezuela that still maintains an international presence—shared, the team had just closed for the holidays, giving them a rare pause to reflect and plan next steps. Otherwise, the gallery has remained active, hosting regular exhibitions and participating in international fairs, despite the compounding challenges of the global art economy and the uniquely difficult conditions of operating in Venezuela over the past several years.

Founded in 2016, Abra emerged at a time when the local market had all but vanished—radically reduced from what it had been just a few decades and political turns earlier. From the outset, the challenge was clear: to give their artists visibility beyond Venezuela. That meant seeking alliances with other galleries and creating long-term pathways for exchange. “We have tried to create a space where the public—but especially the artists and our team—feel safe, seen and valued,” one of the co-founders shared with Observer. “I guess, somehow, we are used to facing difficulties, and I try to see that as a strength. Our aim is to make the work of an amazing group of artists visible; to create opportunities for them and to be able to offer our team a secure and kind workspace.”

They acknowledge that the near-total absence of public and private funding for culture—as well as the broader collapse of the welfare system—has made every cultural actor vulnerable and the work undeniably harder. But these same conditions have also shaped a kind of durable resilience: a constant problem-solving state that fosters adaptability and, in many cases, innovation. Still, constant survival mode has its limits. It leaves little room for longer-term strategic thinking, or for building a more collaborative, interconnected gallery ecosystem—like the one that once existed in Caracas during the height of the city’s international art fair, FIA, which for years attracted major dealers from around the world and recorded record-breaking sales on Venezuelan soil.

Faria and other gallerists agreed that many Venezuelan artists have continued to find ways to work through successive crises—some from within the country, others from new homes abroad. Several galleries today maintain consistent programs, present strong exhibitions and participate in fairs. There are also independent spaces for dialogue, where artists and researchers share ideas, and where performances, poetry readings and other formats unfold with creative urgency. “There was some kind of normality, until the recent days,” she shares. “What’s going to happen now, we do not know. I am fairly certain that we will adapt, find solutions to the obstacles and keep up with our work; at least, that is what recent history has shown me about us. We are very resilient; we want to have beautiful lives, and we are going to keep putting in the effort to make that happen.”

This resilience—and irrepressible sense of hope—recurred across conversations, as did a deep love for and belief in Venezuelan culture and identity. “The years from 2000 to 2025 were difficult, but they also revealed a quiet resistance, as artists continued to create out of conviction even as spaces disappeared,” artist Johan Galue confirmed. Guided by figures like Cruz-Diez and Soto, and inspired by artists such as Jacobo Borges, Emilia Azcárate and Deborah Castillo, Galue and others who remained in Venezuela found ways to continually reinvent their gaze. “I remember the fragile yet vital spaces that survived through collective effort—Oficina #1, El Anexo and, in Maracaibo, the Julio Árraga School—born from living rooms turned into studios and improvised art fairs driven by passion. Being part of this community has shown me that creativity always finds a way, sustained by generosity, resilience and a shared refusal to let art disappear.”

Despite ongoing challenges, the persistence of Venezuelan artists and cultural professionals remains a testament to the country’s creative strength. The founder of Tarsinian Gallery—active since the 1970s in championing Venezuelan artists both inside the country and abroad—remarked on this enduring commitment, which continues to shape the scene today. The gallery has actively supported recent exhibitions by artists like Johan Galue and sees continuity in their efforts. “Artists and art professionals continue to work both inside and outside the country to keep Venezuelan art alive, and their commitment is a ray of hope for a better future. In this context, it is exciting to see how the Venezuelan art scene continues to evolve and find ways to express itself. From painting and sculpture to music and dance, Venezuelan art is a celebration of the country’s identity and creativity.”

Most of the dealers we spoke with—both inside and outside Venezuela—shared a common priority: the preservation and promotion of Venezuelan culture above any broader commercial interest. Faria, in particular, has remained deeply engaged in building connections between artists and institutions, supporting exhibitions, acquisitions and museum partnerships that bring both Venezuelan masters and rising talents back to the center of the international stage. “We’re supporting the shows directly because one of the biggest problems in Latin America is the lack of platforms. There just aren’t enough local structures, so we have to find ways to connect artists to institutions elsewhere,” he says, emphasizing that what Venezuela lacks today is not talent or energy, but infrastructure—something that, in past decades, often existed more robustly there than in neighboring countries.

“We’re all working separately, in different pockets of the world, trying to stay in touch and remain connected,” echoes artist Bernadette Despujols, referring to the intangible yet enduring community of Venezuelans across the globe. “We’re there for each other, even if we don’t always have spaces where we can be fully represented or heard.”

For galleries run by Venezuelan expatriates—such as Henrique Faria in New York, RGR in Mexico City, Tarsinian Gallery and Sorondo Projects in Barcelona—the mission is rooted in what Faria describes as “cultural resistance” and persistence. “It’s a form of resistance through culture. We don’t position ourselves as overtly political, even though art is inevitably political,” he says.

In the current moment, many of the Venezuelan artists, cultural workers and collectors we interviewed expressed a cautious sense of relief—and hope. “As a Venezuelan, I wish for peace and truly free and fair elections after two decades of dictatorship. I hope for justice,” said ceramic artist Samuel Sarmiento, originally from Venezuela and now living and working in Aruba, who recently had a breakthrough solo exhibition at Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York.

Even from this first, multi-layered chapter of the story, it is clear how many different perspectives must be considered when understanding Venezuela’s artistic and cultural trajectory today. The situation remains fluid, complex and contradictory—with many shades of truth, hope, pragmatism, resistance and resilience. If the potential capture or transition of Maduro carries broader international implications and places Venezuelans once again at a point of uncertainty, it also marks a possible turning point—a threshold between what was and what still might be. Despite everything, Venezuela still holds the possibility of something new.