Speaking of contemporary Venezuelan art, is impossible without mentioning Luisa Richter, a painter born in Besigheim, Germany, who settled in Caracas in 1955.

Between 1949 and 1955 Luisa Richter worked in her native Germany under the mentorship of Professor Willi Baumeister, one of the forerunners of abstractionism in Europe, at the National Academy of Plastic Arts in Stuttgart. Luisa Richter was a deeply reflective artist, for whom introspection and tradition are part of the creative process:'One lives between the present and the tradition. The history of art is in our subconscious'.¹

The painting of his early years in Caracas is associated with informalism². At that time, she painted his 'Cortes de Tierra', inspired by the images she saw in the mountains and landscapes during his first ascent to Caracas. Her Cortes de Tierra were "... close to monochrome, with rich textures and conscious bidimensionality".²

Already in the 60 began his expressionist drawings 'Crosses and connections' and in 1963 he temporarily resumes figuration.²

In 1966 he participated in the exhibition The Emergent Decade: Latin American Painters and Painting in the 1960's, in which the Guggenheim Museum in New York presented the work of numerous artists from eight Latin American countries, one of the most revealing examples of Latin⁴

In 1967 his work is recognized in Venezuela with the National Prize of Drawing and Etching and in 1981 with the National Prize of Plastic Arts. In 1978 he represents Venezuela at the XXXVIII Venice Biennial with a sample that gathered twelve oils and thirty collages:

'... at that moment I believed that in the end I was the only artist in the world who had written expressions on the walls of the pavilion.'³

Her activity as a teacher developed between 1969 and 1987 when she was professor of Analytical Drawing and Composition at the Institute of Design Neumann.³Among his students were prominent young Venezuelan artists.

Entering the work of Luisa Richter is imbued with her own reflections, works that the artist has examined and intervened repeatedly. His works were part of himself, a very personal part of his own designs and affections, forming an intimacy between the artist and the work.

His work has been extensively exhibited in America and Europe, and his work has participated in auctions of Latin American art in Sothebys and Christies.

Luisa Richter died in Caracas on October 29, 2015, at the age of 87.

References

¹ Luisa Richter “Nosotros Vivimos Todos en un Collage”, entrevista de María Elena Ramos (20/11/2015)
www.ideasdebabel.com/home/luisa-richter-nosotros-vivimos-todos-en-un-collage-entrevista-de-maria-elena-ramos/

² Richter, Luisa. Wikihistoria del Arte Venezolano.
http://vereda.ula.ve/wiki_artevenezolano/index.php/Richter,_Luisa

³ Luisa Richter (1928-2015) entrevistada por Karl Krispin (30/10/2015)
http://prodavinci.com/2015/10/30/artes/luisa-richter-1928-2015-entrevistada-por-karl-krispin/

⁴ Luisa Richter
http://www.galeriadearteascaso.com/ar_repre_detalle.php?ar_id=14