Julio Aguilera: A Venezuelan Artist Makes His Mark in North America “He knows neither what he wishes for”, wrote Goya in his seventy- ninth year, reflecting on the life of an artist.” He is celebrated for his restlessness, his angers, his passions; he is full of curiosity; he frequents fairs and popular fetes, taking a lively interest in circus animals, acrobats and monsters. He paints, draws, engraves, learns lithography and initiates himself in all the technical discoveries. His lucidity is absolute.” One is reminded of Goya’s words on a visit to the midtown Manhattan studio of the painter and sculptor Julio Aguilera, as he prepares foe his upcoming solo exhibition at the Embassies and Consulates of Venezuela, 1099 30th Street, N.W., Washington D.C., from March 7 to April 1. For evidence of the artist’s restless creative energy is everywhere: In the half-completed paintings on the easel and lined up along the walls; in the forms being modeled in clay, later to be cast in bronze, on the sculpting table: as well as in the squeezed and scattered tubes of oil paint on the palette and the lumps of fresh clay on the floor. However, while Goya was an aficionado of the bull ring, as he directs one’s attention to a recently completed canvas called “Matador,” Julio Aguilera declares, “I am an enemy of bullfighting!” He says this with the conviction of a man who once excelled in a violent sport as a four-time international karate champion, but finally renounced violence for the life of an artist. His contempt for an even more violent blood sport in which the odds weigh heavily in favor the human participants, while their unwilling animal opponents are summarily executed at the finale of the ritual, is obvious in his painting. “Matador” shows the bull triumphant, for once, the matador slumped over his powerful back like a limp rag in his green suit of lights. A horse the color of fresh blood (“All of my horses are red,” says Aguilera) rears up directly behind the bull. Presumably, it is the mount of a fallen and gored picador, the bull’s most cowardly tormentor. The horse is turned in the opposite direction from the bull, creating the effect of a single mythic creature with a head at each end. Both animals appear more noble than the defeated matador. Other paintings by Aguilera, of a clown from his “Circus” series, and of a voluptuous female nude, although addressing less weighty themes, are similarly strong in execution, their forms practically carved out of thick, juicy oil impastos that lend them a physical presence akin to his sculptures. Conversely, Aguilera invests his sculptures with the fluid movement and gestural force of painting. The two mediums enrich and complement each other as the doubly gifted artist works back and forth between them, often interpreting the same themes. Splendid examples of this can be seen in the two sculptures entitled, respectively, “War and Peace” and “Minotaur,” both of which have also been realized as paintings. In ”War and Peace” ( a more monumental version of which has been commissioned for a building on Park Avenue), the theme is embodied in the rhythmically intertwined forms of a bull astride a struggling horse, seemingly symbolizing how the aggressive forces unfortunately prevail over more placid ones. In”Minotaur,” the big wooly head of the fabled man-beast, nestled between the breasts of a swooning female nude, conveys the more positive power of erotic passion. Both pieces are possessed of a formal fluidity, coupled with a craggy ruggedness of surface, akin to the best sculptures of Jacques Lipschitz. In another recent sculpture by Aguilera, commissioned by a collector named Rafael Rojas to grace the board room of the Venezuelan firm Venro Petroleum, tall conical oil rigs and drilling machines metamorphose into robotic, dinosaur-like beasts of burden. Thus the sculptor creates a memorable metaphor for how such machines serve the modern world’s needs for transportation of fuel and heating oil. In Julio Aguilera’s studio, next to some snapshots of him posing cozily with his pretty blond wife Elena, there is a convincing photograph of the artist standing with an arm around the shoulders of a seated Pablo Picasso. Of course, since Aguilera was only eleven years old when Picasso died and is fully grown in the photograph, the picture is obviously a mock-up, an affectionate joke. Yet it is clear that Aguilera, who refers to Picasso as “The Old Man,” sees the Spanish master as a spiritual father. And indeed the spirit of Picasso is present in the bold figurative distortions of Aguilera’s paintings and sculptures of bulls and horses; of musicians and harlequins; of minotaurs and female nudes with sensually swelling contours. However, even when locating himself firmly within the traditions of the masters he admires (as he does in his bows to Hispanic forbearers like Goya and Velasquez such as his witty contemporary reworking of “La Infanta”) Julio Aguilera emerges as a highly original and thoroughly committed talent. Indeed, Aguilera has remained true to his calling and his unique vision ever since, as impoverished five year old shining shoes in the streets of Caracas, Venezuela, a local painter made him the gift of a handful of half squeezed tubes of oil paint. Thus began a journey that has brought Julio Aguilera to his present prominence as arguably the most dynamic artist from Venezuela at work in the United States today". –Ed McCormack Gallery&Studio March 2005

Self-taught

Sculptor & Painter Recent Shows: • 2006 Davidoff of Geneva New York City. • 2005 Venezuelan Consulate Gallery, New York City. • 2004 Citibank Park Avenue, New York City. • 2004 Marriott Marquis, New York, NY. • 2004 Art. Atlanta. Atlanta Convention Center. Philadelphia, PA. • 2004 Thyme Gallery, Havertown, PA. • 2004 Venezuelan Consulate Gallery, New York City. • 2004 Art Philadelphia, Philadelphia Convention Center. • 2004 International ArtExpo. Jacob Javits Center, New York City. • 2004 Décor Expo International, Jacob Javits Convention Center New York City. • 2004 Citibank One Rockefeller Plaza, New York City. • 2003 Venezuelan Center, New York City. • 2003 Frames Works Galleries. Holland, MI. • 2003 Kandu Galleries. Holland, MI. • 2003 International Art Expo, Las Vegas, NV. • 2003 General Motors / GMC East Hampton, NY. • 2003 Art Chicago, - Navy Pier Chicago, IL. • 2003 Art Atlanta, - Atlanta Convention Center. Atlanta, GA. • 2003 International ArtExpo. Jacob Javits Center New York City. • 2003 Galleria West, New Jersey. • 2003 Art Miami, Miami, FL. • 2003 Latin Museum. Miami, FL. • 2002 La Gallerie.East Elmhurst,NY. • 2002 La Gallery. New York City. • 2002 Palm Springs International Art Fair. Convention center Palm Springs, CA. • 2002 Feria Cuadro Madrid, Spain. • 2002 Venezuelan Consulate Gallery. New York City. • 2001 International Art Fair. Montreal, Canada. • 2001 Venezuelan Consulate Gallery, New York City. • 2001 Art Atlanta. Atlanta Convention Center. • 2001 Richards. Greenwich, CT. • 2000 Décor Expo International, Jacob Javits Center. New York City. • 2000 Feria Iberoamericana de Arte. Caracas, Venezuela. • 2000 ArtBa Feria de Arte Contemporaneo. Buenos Aires, Argentina. • 2000 Venezuelan Consulate Gallery, New York City. • 1999 Huntington Public Library, Huntington, NY. • 1999 Cosi Public Display Huntington, NY. • 1998 Galleria Portal. Barcelona, Spain.