Woman as an eternal source of creation in the work of Víctor Asuaje

Víctor Asuaje (1966) is a self-taught Venezuelan artist. When inquiring where his interest in art comes from, for assuming art as a profession, Asuaje says that since his childhood he was surrounded by visual artists and people from the world of dance. He comes from a family where there was always a great inclination for the arts. He mentions that his sister studied dance and one of his brothers, from a very young age, studied art and pursued an artistic career. In addition, he had the support of his parents, who were always a fundamental support in his training ─self-taught, as he usually emphasizes─, because they were always there, instilling values such as discipline and research, which he undoubtedly complements with his sensibility and imagination. Looking back, Asuaje remembers that in his childhood, American and Japanese animated and printed cartoons caught his attention, particularly for that reason, because they were drawings, beyond the stories that those images told.

As he grew older, he began to frequent and walk the halls and classrooms of the Escuela de Arte Rafael Ramón González, in Acarigua, Portuguesa, whose students, all older than him, became his friends. When he was in high school, he began to participate in art collectives, to bring together those artists he knew around study and research groups, and they ended up organizing exhibitions, making art salons, and making murals on the walls of the city.

In his self-formation phase, Asuaje also considers significant the two seasons he lived in the nineties in the Barrio Gótico of Barcelona, Spain, where he took the opportunity to nurture himself with art in the streets, museums, and galleries. In relation to artists as useful references in his work, he considers that there are some who have allowed him to form a necessary perspective in his creative process, they are Da Vinci, who has given it rigor and fullness; Goya, who has provided depth, and Picasso, candidness, and clairvoyance.

Asuaje comments that his early contact with art, his need for expression and his participation in the great art hall La Nueva Naturaleza, held at the Museo de Barquisimeto in 1985, laid the foundations for his decision to live 24 hours a day in the art world. After that came his first individual exhibitions Signos y símbolos, at the Galería de Arte Clave, in Caracas, 1989, curated by Luís Ángel Duque; Obra reciente, 1992, in the same space, curated by Juan Carlos Palenzuela; and Encuentro en sala 2, Sala Ipostel of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, 1994. These exhibitions, according to his criteria, guided his exhaustive and meticulous visual production.

The recurring motif in Asuaje's visual discourse is the female figure, "woman as the eternal source of creation", as he himself points out, which has been working since its inception in the art world, although in parallel it has developed other thematic proposals. When asked if there is or has been any woman in particular who has served as inspiration and model, he replies that he starts from past images, of the image of women as a symbol from the archaic, and current images such as the Fashion look.

Certainly, for some ancient and even current cultures, the woman is a symbol of fertility, personifies nature, and is "eternal source of creation." The oldest female representations are related to magical rites associated with the control of nature and fertility, with the idea of guaranteeing the survival and continuity of the species. Prehistoric Venuses, for example, represent women with big breasts and round bellies, whose feminine traits have been linked to fertility. For some cultures, women have been considered as the source of life and therefore, closely associated with and protected by the forces of nature.

Asuaje's female figures are portraits of women represented from the front or in profile, with long or short necks; of challenging, seductive, tender, shy, elusive, abstracted, or downcast looks. Although at first glance it seems to be the same face that is multiplied or repeated, upon closer inspection one notices that each one has its own physiognomy and psychological expression.

This visual proposal is the result of his experience with drawing, graphic arts, and painting. In these compositions, Asuaje demonstrates his skill as a draftsman and painter, as well as his handling of figuration and abstraction. In the first place, it is perceived that the feminine image is defined by the drawing; the line delimits the contours and the values ─the game of lights and shadows─ details, gives realism, volume and expressiveness to the faces; secondly, it is seen that the female figures are intervened by transparencies and a tangled forest of brushstrokes, strokes and gestural stains that create striking atmospheres of color and visual textures in the manner of abstract expressionism. In this way, the women of Asuaje give the impression of being submerged, merged, or camouflaged among foliage; they also seem to emerge from a plant world, or to be nature itself, "eternal source of creation."

Written by José Gregorio Noroño,