Resonant Space

The Colorhythms of Alejandro Otero

The Venezuelan painter and sculptor Alejandro Otero (1921–1990) was one of the most significant artists in the history of abstraction. Between 1955 and 1960, he developed an extraordinary series of 75 paintings called Coloritmos (Colorhythms), one of his major contributions to the field of painting. Painted with Duco, a shiny industrial lacquer applied with a spray gun or roller, the Colorhythms are large-scale compositional modules executed on rectangular support structures. In these works, Otero succeeded in emphasizing rhythm and colour over form; as a consequence of optical intensity, chromatic vibration, and the suggestion of rhythmic movement, the pictures seem to expand dynamically outward.This illuminating book, the first dedicated to Colorhythms, evaluates their place in Otero’s practice and in the context of international geometric abstraction.

Rina Carvajal is an independent curator and critic based in Miami who is presently a guest curator for the Instituto de Arte Contemporânea (IAC) in São Paulo and the instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.