(Venezuela)

 

Painter and engraver. He studied pure art and graphic arts at the Cristóbal Rojas School (1957-1960). In 1960 he received the Club de los Leones Prize at the XVIII Arturo Michelena Hall, an honorable mention at the XXI Official Salon and a first prize at the Salon of Young Painters in Maracay. In 1961 he traveled to Europe and in Paris he entered the Superior School of Fine Arts for eight months. In 1962 he resided in Rome, where he worked and studied engraving techniques on metal in the workshop of Atilio Giuliani. In 1963 he traveled to Spain and studied lithography at the National School of Graphic Arts in Madrid. At the end of 1963 he moved to Morocco. Between 1964 and 1965 he settled in Brussels and for a year studied engraving at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. In 1965 he returned to Venezuela and settled in Maracaibo, dedicating himself to teaching at the Julio Arraga School of Plastic Arts until 1968. In 1967, with Francisco Hung and Carlos Contramaestre, he exhibited at the Art Museum of Bogotá and the Council Hall. Municipal District of Maracaibo, as a member of the group 40 Grados a la Sombra. In 1969 he participated in the XII Salon Julio T. Arze and shares the first prize with Francisco Hung. About his pictorial work, Juan Calzadilla believes that "the important thing in Bellorín is that it links more deeply with the surrealist spirit, something that had never happened in the country." Bellorín works with figurative erotic symbols -with essentially drawing drawings- in stylizations of animalized vegetable forms.The female sex appears abundantly under the aspect of fruits half-open and jagged "(1968, p.198). In 1971 he was part of "Confrontaciones 71", with Mercedes Pardo and Alirio Palacios, and in 1972 he received a scholarship from Inciba and LUZ, to specialize in graphic techniques; He travels to Geneva (Switzerland) and later to Mexico (1973), where he carries out serigraphic research and fabric prints at the School of Design and Crafts of Mexico. In these years he works on paper, varying drawing and graphics. In 1974 he returned to Venezuela, directs the screen printing workshop of LUZ and works in the chair of design fundamentals at the School of Social Communication. This same year he exhibits a series of lithographs at the Contemporary Engraving Center in Geneva (Switzerland). In 1975 he joined "Brief history of metal engraving" (MBA) and in 1976 the traveling exhibition "Artists of eastern Venezuela" organized by the GAN. Since 1978, together with other Zulia artists, he forms part of the New Space group. In 1980, he participated in the 1st Western Artists Salon in Mérida, where he received the first prize in painting, and exhibited "La materia y el sueueño" in the GAN.

 

Bellorín's work achieves fluidity through multiple forms. The use of spots, crossed lines and circles on chromatic contours maintains a rhythm of compositions very varied. His work is coherent even when there are ruptures in his evolution. From a fatalistic totemic scenario, in which the power of totems prevails over human life, it passes to the discovery of the expansion of perception that is expressed in a playful creation. These two stages belong to a defined historical moment: the first is associated with a Latin American magical-cubist stage, which had its manifesto in the fifties, centered on the work of Wifredo Lam and Oswaldo Vigas. The second, without abandoning the expression of magical worlds, opens towards luminous perceptions where light and space are present in abundance. In this second phase, Bellorín creates crossed universes by sharp straight lines, vectors that hold the space in a clear composition. In the eighties he participated in different exhibitions, among them "Inquiry of the image (the figure, the scope, the object), Venezuela, 1680-1980, Thematic exhibition, First part" (GAN, 1980) with Sitting Woman I (acrylic on canvas, GAN collection), "13 visions, 13 languages" (Durban Gallery, 1982), "Novelty iconography" (Galería Euroamericana, 1983), at the Donald Warren Gallery with Manuel Espinoza and Angelo Foong (New York, 1986), and in the 1st Guayana Biennial (1988). In 1992 he participated in a collective in the Cité des Arts (Paris) and in the XXIV International Painting Festival (Canes-sur-Mer). In 1996 CAMLB organized a retrospective of 60 works (drawings, serigraphs and paintings) dated between 1960 and 1995. "Bellorín's painting is what remains of the alluvial flow of a long creative career [...] The execution of these paintings It is impeccable, clear, safe, with a great sense of color and carefully composed, sometimes with certain shapes and elements taken from previous works, which are inserted and modified into well-articulated new combinations, but it is not a constructive painting, nor is it it is informal or automatic, even if it has something of that: sylvatic, ghostly, libidinal symbols appear and disappear in the agitation or serenity of splendid colors, painting is first of all "(Erminy, 1996, p.11).

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Source: http://vereda.ula.ve/wiki_artevenezolano/index.php/Bellor%C3%ADn,_Francisco