Juan Carlos Palenzuela

How many times will we see this work again? How many times will the author insist on the same characters, on a subject as definitely human as the one that observes him?

Drawing, especially work on paper, is closely linked to the expression of Ivan Petrovszky. Drawing on all types of paper including newspapers, and all the classical resources, pencil, ink, paints, watercolors, and pasta used to define bodies, most of the time in an urban setting. The square, the street, the public gardens are the places where occur the situations of this work, which relates its European accent: there, where everything seems to pass at a distance, where one can spend hours reading the newspaper, where the body movements lack emergency, and nevertheless, where their mere presence fills the image with expectation.

The models of this work have a certain age, and perhaps some children in their arms. All the time is for the neighborhood meeting. Consequently, its final thought is about the destiny of man.

Abound those who sleep, that rest, that let the time pass, indifferent. The lines of the bodies are few, precise and ungainly, lines of ink or pencil, sometimes semi-hidden by the color. The color finally reaffirms a climate between melancholy and existential. They are pure stripes, without accidents, without anecdotes, without details, but with an accent on the emotional that is capable of transmitting color. All these individuals, however, are showing their willingness to read-newspapers, letters-that is, they want to communicate or expect something.

I've always imagined Petrovszky work within the major themes of modern culture such as waiting and melancholy.

The guns did not cease after 1945. Quite the contrary, the upheavals have been continuous. For a man of this century, migrant by force of circumstances, which has seen disappeared nations and factions emerge, the solitary figure on a square or those beings standing at the line of the infinite sea, reveals the condition of the time.

But this is a work without rhetoric. What I say has no more sense than the position of a thought, of a creator in the context of the contemporary debate of ideas and images. Petrovszky's work refers to the vision of man and therefore, many times, it reminds me of a concept of Michel Seuphor (1965) referred to the transformation "through the force that gives rise to calm, through calm that dominates situations.

Thus, tranquility is the only victory. And the permanence of the victory gives the style." In this work the body alludes to human dispositions.

Petrovszky's characters are sitting down, lying, standing up and usually alone even though they appear next to each other. The exception is those who are on the beach, the couples either dating or in family groups. His subject is one and even covers the model in the workshop (a few times naked) and stray dogs.

Repeatedly it is a work that represents man, whether in a resting or working attitude. The background is constituted by one tone to perhaps two, in horizontal stripes. That color goes through the body of the individuals; hence, shape and color have a single ring. But the models may show a different register in the background. Then the figure is seen built by the touch or geometry of color that defines it in the chromatic space. His palette has mainly blues, reds and gray, but we will also find yellows, browns and some greens. Sometimes it has texture and sometimes transparencies.

All of this has brought the artist the nickname of solitary. Indeed, Petrovszky has been removed from fraternities or clubs that made history, he has been out of the social hand-kissing, and he spends his time only in his studio and on certain streets of Caracas (because it is about Caracas) where he takes his notes from live models, whom he then takes to his works both on paper as to his painting.

Petrovszky is a "Time Traveler" because throughout his life he has gone from one city to another city, from one continent to another. In this exhibition there are some landscapes or impressions of cities, ports, streets, always with that look, that color, which gives a general tone. In addition, his column in a Venezuelan newspaper was entitled "Travel Folders", so the fact of traveling is to move, go on a pilgrimage has been a constant in his life. In his drawings, watercolors and inks the theme of the reader is common, which can be taken as a metaphor of the journey.

This exhibition, "" Time Traveler "is a journey through the folders, papers, the file of the" Master" as well as among some of his recent works. It is once again meeting with the image of man and his dreams before the skyline.

Caracas, Venezuela
March 1998