Alejandro Otero

Born in El Manteco, Venezuela, Alejandro Otero studied in Caracas before settling in Paris in 1945. He participated in Los Disidentes, a group advocating a break with academic conventions. His Cafeteras take domestic objects as the starting point for progressive simplification: recognisable things become relationships between lines, surfaces and rhythms. This exploration established him as an important participant in Venezuelan abstraction.

In the Coloritmos, rectangular compositions develop serial variations in which colour and repetition organise the act of looking. Otero also brought abstraction into public space, notably through his contribution to the Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas designed by Carlos Raúl Villanueva. Painting, architecture and urban life enter into dialogue. His kinetic sculptures extend this attention to movement and to the transformation of visual experience beyond the limits of a picture.