Mercedes Pardo

Galerías y otras organizaciones que le representan

Fundación Alejandro Otero-Mercedes Pardo

Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino

Organizaciones con obra

Betsy Frank Gallery

Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO)

Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC)

Ver todas (10)

Profesionales con obra

Juan Carlos Maldonado

Descripción del Artista

Mercedes (Clementina Marta Del Carmen) Pardo (1921-2005, Venezuela) The daughter of Rafael Pardo Becerra and Inés Mercedes Ponte Machado, Mercedes Pardo was one of the most important representatives of abstract art in Venezuela. Her work revolved mainly around painting but also extended to stained glass, enamel on metal, and graphics. Likewise, she created pieces involving architectural integration as well as theatrical sets and wardrobe. She taught and founded several creativity workshops. During her childhood, she was taught painting by Danish professor Ingeborg Fostberg, and at age thirteen, she began taking courses at the Academy of Fine Arts, which she continued in 1941 and completed in 1944. In 1945, she married Marco Bontá, a stained glass and mural painting professor from Chile, divorcing him shortly thereafter. She traveled to Chile to attend the Santiago Academy of Fine Arts (1947), where she had her first solo show. In 1949, she was awarded a fellowship by the Government (Ministry of Education), and then moved to Paris to enroll at the École du Louvre, where she studied art history under Cohe de la Ferti and Jean Cassou. During this period, she began producing collages and her first abstract works. In 1951, she married Alejandro Otero in London. In 1952, she returned to Venezuela and participated in the International Exhibition of Abstract Art (Cuatro Muros Gallery, Caracas). Abstractionism began to be recognized in Venezuela during the 1950s, and a climate of renewal for both artistic production and education was supported by Caracas University’s implementation of an artistic integration project and by the return of a generation of artists educated in France. Around 1956, Pardo began producing pieces that could be categorized as pre-informalist given their use of a rich pictorial layer, though her work tended toward a formal exploration of color effects. In 1956, she began doing stage sets with Elizabeth Schön’s Interval at the National Theater in Caracas. In 1960, she moved to Paris, where she painted abstract watercolors characterized by their lyrical brushstrokes, drips and blotches that created a highly dynamic artistic space. In 1962, she became a founding member of the San Antonio de Los Altos Cooperative School in the State of Miranda, known today as the Community School and initiated its craft workshops, where she also gave classes. Working in architecture integration, she produced a number of pieces, including a stained-glass window at the La Hoyada station of the Caracas subway (1983), a mosaic mural at the J. M. de los Ríos Children’s Hospital (Caracas) and the ceiling of La Viña Shopping Center in Valencia (Carabobo State). In 1991, she held her most important anthological exhibition, Abodes of Color at the National Art Gallery. During her final years, she worked and lived in San Antonio de Los Altos (State of Miranda).

Exposiciones en las que ha participado como artista

Women Shaping Abstraction

Colectiva

Contemporaneidades 1948 - 2024

Colectiva

Cartografía de la creación femenina. Mujeres en el Arte Venezolano

Colectiva

12 exposiciones colectivas

14 exposiciones