Tito Salas: Integration of art and heroic history (+Christmas)

Published at: 08/05/2024 08:29 AM

On May 8, 1887, the master Tito Salas was born in Caracas, remembered as the painter of the iconography of El Libertador Simón Bolívar and the Proceres who, together with Bolívar, created the independence of Venezuela.

His real name was British Antonio Salas Díaz, son of José Antonio Salas, one of the first merchants to establish a beer industry in Venezuela.

He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Caracas, together with Federico Brandt, Manuel Cabré and Armando Reverón, among other outstanding visual artists. After winning the prize of the Academy's annual competition (1901), he traveled to Paris in 1905 to enroll in the Julian Academy where he was taught by Jean Paul Laurens.

He also attended the La Grande Chaumière school where he received classes from the painters Lucien Simon, Courtois and Prinet. That same year, he sent a work to the Official Salon in Paris.

In 1906, he won a third gold medal with his composition La San Genaro. That same year he went to Italy, where he was struck by the work of Tiépolo, Tintoretto, Tiziano, and above all, by the historical genre cultivated by these teachers.

Between 1907 and 1908, he traveled to Spain, where he painted a series of works based on the observation of the country's scenes and customs. In 1908, he won a gold medal at the Brussels Exhibition.

After a long stay full of awards and works, he returned to Venezuela in 1911, bringing with him the Bolívar Triptych, a work that marked the beginning of a series of commissions, whose central theme was framed in the Liberator that is currently in the Federal Palace.

Although his work as a painter of historical subjects has overshadowed his work as a landscape painter, it should not be forgotten that Salas stands out among the artists who have helped to develop the tradition of modern art that began in Venezuela after 1900.

Mazo News Team