Arte Popular, Arte Ingenuo y Arte Figurativo en la obra pictórica de Bárbaro Rivas

Bárbaro Rivas (1893–1967) is considered to be the first ‘primitivist’ and ‘figurativist’ in Venezuela. Local and ludic elements create the central axis of popular and figurative Venezuelan art transformation from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. It was when a sign in painting was redefined – resignified and became an element binding main forms of popular art, reality of artist’s world, simplicity of life transformed into an idea of primitivism. Like other artists of his times (Armando Reverón), Bárbaro Rivas derived his art from life of local society and his own experience. His art is marked with autobiographical elements, which constitute a borderline between common sense and madness. Presented world is permeated with religiousness, magic and superstitions. In visualization, it is important to present reality from a double perspective; his artworks contain twoand three-dimensional grounds embraced in a single depiction. Plastic poetics of Bárbaro Rivas contains contradictory elements, inconsistent prima facie, yet containing in their nature rudimentary elements rooted in popular imagination, religious beliefs, etc. The world, being a mixture of elements, becomes a peculiar metisage expressed through the simplicity of primitivism, in the context of searching and describing new worlds and experience. This article aims not only at explaining how Venezuelan artist imagines and plans his art, but also at describing his approach to popular and local elements in Venezuela, which then spread across the whole Latin America as a form of artistic expression.