Milton Becerra
Milton Becerra
He graduated from the Cristóbal Rojas School of Arts (1972) under the Jesús Soto promotion. From 1973 to 1980 Milton Becerra was assistant-partner in the workshops of the renowned masters Carlos Cruz-Diez and Jesús Soto. He participated in his first collective exhibition when he was still a student. He studied art trends such as Concrete, Neo,
Kinetic, Generative and "Op-art". In 1973 he opened his first solo exhibition "Vibro-hexagonal Volume" that included a sound atmosphere presented at the Ateneo de Caracas, that won him the prize of the Third National Exhibition of Young Artists.
He applies this knowledge to the development of irregular shapes called Hexagon Geometry or "Hexagonometry", based on the arrangement of different modules in space based on Kasimir Malevich's "White Cube" theory, and Ludwig Wittgenstein's "Tractatus logico-philosophicus" concepts that investigates colors, their behavior in space and the division of forms through color ranges. On the resulting works, Venezuelan art historian Alfredo Boulton (1908–1995) wrote: “Milton Becerra’s works characterize a concern about the volumes and strong structures, that accompany subtle chromatic features. We are, thus, in front of a solid object, but at the same time light and fragile.”
Concerned about nature and the enormous legacy of Venezuela's indigenous peoples, Milton Becerra is able, in his first solo exhibition, to fuse the traditions of Venezuelan primitive cultures with the modernity of the artistic trends of the time. Milton Becerra does not discriminate on the aesthetic aspects, on the contrary makes them coexist, transcending the artistic harmony and visual resources of primitive cultures with geometric abstraction and the Venezuelan artistic kinetic movement, relevant at that time.
Meteorite Ibirapuera Park, XVIII Biennial of São Paulo, Brazil (1985).
Three years later Milton Becerra presented at the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art his work "Programmed Modules", where he expresses his concerns towards land intervention by photography. Under this context, in the 70s, the early works of Milton Becerra come into view, placed in suburban areas of Caracas, on the blurred boundaries between city and forest, or high pastures and the streambeds, or in the city's last streets and homes, or in the Colonia Tovar, or in La Mariposa dam. Although these were, at the time, actions and interventions, these pieces later became Photographic Series, and constitute—beyond themselves—his first plastic and poetic approach to the vision of nature and earth as sacred, conducive to mystical experiences and filled with the cultural memory of silenced or vanished peoples. This starting point characterizes later the context of his artworks. Milton Becerra is considered one of the pioneers of Land Art in Venezuela, a contemporary art movement that uses elements of nature or its environments to produce a reaction in the spectator observing the landscape presented and intervened by the artist.