Armando Reverón (1889-1954)

Marcelo Vidal Orozco Collection
Josefina Vidal de Hernández (by descent)
Private Collection, Wellington, Florida

Caracas, Museo de Bellas Artes, Exposición retrospectiva de Armando Reverón, July 1955, no. 156, p. 28

Juan Calzadilla, Pintores venezolanos, Volume I, Caracas, Ediciones EDIME, 1974, p. 262, illustrated in color

The Venezuelan Impressionist painter Armando Reverón is perhaps best known for his seemingly monochromatic paintings created from the mid-1920-30s of abstracted landscapes and seascapes bathed in an ethereal, white light. However, in the late 1930s he focused his energies largely on depicting expressionistically rendered female nudes and subjects. Retrato de Juanita is representative of this period and likewise immortalizes a significant figure in the artist’s life—his inseparable partner and wife Juanita Rios. Reverón met Juanita Rios in 1918 and she posed for him frequently throughout his career, including appearing as one of two models in “la Gruta” (Women in the Cave)—the artist’s masterwork from his so-called “blue period.”

In 1920, Reverón moved with Juanita to the coastal town of Macuto, where he built a small home, “El Castillete de las Quince Letras” which they shared for their remaining years. It was here at this home and the nearby environs that Reverón depicted his beloved Juanita on numerous occasions.  In this work, Juanita is shown wearing a short sleeve, white dress that accentuates her body. Her braided tresses gently frame her face, while the warm colors of her dress subtley reflect against her mouth and forehead breathing life into this seemingly traditional composition.

Painted in gouache on paper, a technique favored by the artist since 1933, this work is characterized (as so many from this period) by a very peculiar application of the gouache medium—a quick and spontaneous execution in which he applies thin layers of paint to carefully construct the image. In this phase of his brilliant artistic production, Reverón painted as if he were drawing and the gestural qualities, evident throughout the surface of Juanita’s portrait, are an indication of the profound dynamism that animates this work despite the model’s seemingly stiff and solemn stance.