Venezuelan Decorative Art

Original Tere tapestry from the 1970's

Bernardo Nieves is a Venezuelan artist born on October 18th, 1961, in the quaint, small-town (at the time), city of Barquisimeto. A plastic self-taught artist who has sought instruction and knowledge with great effort, that began as a craft simple craft "hobby" which takes a big part in his life that today is grateful for. From his first steps in painting, passion for landscaping washes are printed on cardboard chimo-sepia, where he expressed his vision through cobbled streets, adobe houses, and mills. In this quest for artistic development, reconciles with oil, and monochrome images become hearty in colorful expressions by the nobility of the art. This new knowledge drives him to plot their future goals. At the end of this decade and early next, develops their technical experience in new materials and strengthens brushwork. In the 80s, a new inspiration emerges from the vegetation decorating fields, valleys, and forests. And these reasons are the ones he will project to a higher level by giving importance to his image as an artist. Towards the end of the century decade, he fully converts in "artist" by trade, then, what began as a pleasure is now his passion in one hundred percent of his time. Individual and group exhibits were already part of their commitments and his time was most devoted to art; during the last five years of the '90s was when his career took a new impulse and his image reached more interesting levels. It is here, while changes in his artistic life are in full swing, the artist pierced the thin line that divides the creative artist and the creator-artist and in the effort to show his graphics concepts, he developed mural projects which found acceptance among his colleagues and Barquisimeto people. So many events together were not enough to Bernardo, who while all these facts, internally was engendering a new graphic idea that definitely will take him to what he is now: the artist that succeeded. From the year 2000 an overturn of his motivations are mixed with trends and those landscapes: the Avila, forests, and valleys, suddenly a "coup" of artistic movement when the first Equus figure came out. These floating horses, first in earthy ochre, of long and slender limbs, have occupied the whole life of the artist. From stained canvases...