Edison Parra
Edison Parra
Sculptor and painter. In 1960 he entered the School of Fine Arts Neptalí Rincón in Maracaibo and at the same time was part of the Vertical group 9. In this time his paintings, made in large formats, represented images of the marabine neighborhoods, as well as their own household utensils and utensils. from that region. Later he continued studies at the Cristóbal Rojas School, from which he graduated in 1966. In 1967 he traveled to Paris with a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Zulia State, which was later replaced by a scholarship from Inciba. His first works in Paris followed traditional methods, but he soon began to investigate the constructivist aspects and kinetics, and made a series of variations of three-dimensional reliefs in wood, iron and plastic that explored the problems of refraction of light. In this stage he elaborated spellings in plastic and wood that he submitted to a compositional scheme where he used basic colors in works of small format; also from this period are circles, squares and rectangles in wood subject to a colored surface that require the tactile intervention of the spectator. Later, he experimented with the combination of sculpture and painting, using blocks of fibrous material armed with nylon on cardboard, covered with painted signs. In 1981 he returns to Venezuela and, in the Sala Cadafe, exhibits a significant number of these pieces. It also organizes an experimental workshop for the School of Plastic Arts of Maracaibo. Edison Parra has participated in numerous salons and biennials, among them the "Grands et Jeunes d'Aujourd'hui" (Paris, 1973 and 1976), XLI Salon Arturo Michelena (1983), III Biennial of Visual Arts (Museo de Barquisimeto, 1985 ) and I Biennial of Guayana (Soto Museum, 1987). In 1988 he exhibited the individual "The ancestral signs", large format works made in mixed media (acrylic, acrovinilic, powder pigments, plastic glue), on recycled paper and glued cardboard. These works are inscribed in what is called "sign art", which integrates primary emblems, ideograms, signs, graphics and symbols that are organized as an alphabet without pretending to be a logical language. Parra's aesthetic development has gone through a singular path, "first experimenting in the three-dimensionality with heavy, opaque sculptures, located in the inclemency of the streets of Maracaibo [...] Then the proposition returns to the hand, to the most intimate treatment in the scale and dialogue: the drawing takes the continuity of the research.The results are exciting.It feels that the signs that used to be swallowed up by the scarcity of the used material appear with new validity.On paper and cardboard, writing takes place of ritual and ceremony , of a religion open to all winds "(Guevara, 1988). The GAN owns the large format work of Parra Signs of ancestral connections (acrylic, polyacrylic, color pigments and plastic glue on paper, 1987).
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