Oswaldo Vigas exhibition provides glorious gift of escape, beauty

One of Latin America’s most important painters, Vigas gave us a gift in his tireless work of his drawings and paintings. A gift we could use more of today—the gift of beauty.

“El alacrán” by Oswaldo Vigas. Photo credit Holly Bechiri.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I walked into the Oswaldo Vigas exhibition for the first time at the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM). I felt my shoulders drop; my eyes regain their sparkle; my body got lighter.

You think I am exaggerating for the sake of the story.

I promise you I am not. I have returned several times to visit his work again, and that “lifting” feeling happens every time. That, friends, is the gift of beauty.

The galleries (such as just these two walls, above) hold work as far-ranging as “Bruja infante” (bottom left) and “Plegaria” (bottom right). Photos credit Holly Bechiri.

Art, or at least quality, carefully considered, and masterfully created art, has many gifts for us. Not all art is beautiful, nor need it be. There is art that can help us navigate some of the ugliest deeds of humanity and find a way out of them by facing their stark realities. Art can tell stories, connect us to each other. Art has many functions, and we miss out if we limit it to just one or two. Art’s function isn’t merely an escape. It isn’t solely beauty.

But, oh, may we not discount the power of beauty on its own. Beauty is a balm to the soul. We need it, more than we realize. Whatever theorists are saying now about art museums being gathering places, civic centers, a necessary “third place” and all of that jargon swept into the ever-shifting tide of language around “placemaking,” art museums are more than just places for communities to gather. And when they are discounted all their facets, they all too often fall short of becoming truly meaningful places where meaningful gatherings can happen.

The “art museum as third place” proposal has its merits. But careful the pendulum does not swing too far, for too long, away from the importance of the art museum as a holder of beauty.

“Proyecto para mural en verde” by Oswaldo Vigas.

The paintings by Oswaldo Vigas are a shining example of the role a museum can play as a holder of beauty. They are glorious: tactile, rich with form and color, so perfectly composed to be in balance and bring me back into balance. This exhibit, up through September 2 at the GRAM, is a necessary experience. Like I said, I felt my shoulders drop and my body lighten.

“Asmodé” by Oswaldo Vigas. Photo credit Holly Bechiri.

But just as much of that shoulder dropping was to be able to, once again, walk into an art museum and see a reverence for creation, for beauty.

At Vigas’ core, I discovered while watching a documentary about him called “The Orchid Seller,” there is a man full of emotion, of regret and guilt and frustration. Originally trained and serving as a surgeon, his heart broke for the children dying for lack of access to health care, at the poverty in his own country. He had to give up medicine for fear it would kill him. He found himself weeping each night at what he witnessed during the day. So Vigas left Venezuela, with its struggling poverty, and went to Paris when the opportunity was given him—becoming friends with some of the greatest painters of his time, painters like Picasso and Calder in the 50s and 60s.

Even before Paris, while still a doctor, Vigas was already winning awards for his painting. Shifting away from medicine and dedicating his career to art seems to have been less a choice than a necessity, a grasp at survival.

“In large part, my calling as a painter is owed to the fact that when I paint, I don’t think. I am set free from the guilt to which I am shackled,” says Vigas in the “The Orchid Seller.”

From the angle of the documentary film, in large part that guilt is rooted in the fact that Vigas also left behind a much beloved brother, Reynaldo, who was beginning to struggle with schizophrenia when Vigas left the country. After electric shock treatments, eventually Reynaldo killed himself to escape the torture—whether from his treatments or the illness itself, we’re left unsure.

Vigas escapes his own tortures through painting. Despite the pain, he finds joy in exploring life’s mysteries. And perhaps this exploration, this joy, helps him (and us!) understand that the act of escape into beauty is not mere escapism, but a means of survival. Perhaps that understanding of escape is why his paintings, though “merely” beautiful, hold so much power.

“Life searches for incredible ways to go on,” says Vigas. “It always finds a way.”

“Solariega” by Oswaldo Vigas. Photo credit Holly Bechiri.

“Oswaldo Vigas: Transformations”

On view at Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) through September 2
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Meijer Free Days: Tuesdays, Thursday evenings
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