Conductores de Venezuela

Conductores de Venezuela is a giant ceramic mural on a wall outside the Covered Gymnasium at the Central University of Venezuela, facing out to the Francisco Fajardo freeway. It was designed by cartoonist Pedro León Zapata and installed over a period of years in the late 1990s; it depicts cartoon Venezuelan people driving, with several vehicles having important Venezuelans from history behind the wheel.

Conductores de Venezuela
Part of the mural, with the Covered Gymnasium behind.
Artist	Pedro León Zapata
Year	1999
Owner	Central University of Venezuela

Background

The Venezuelan architect and designer Carlos Raúl Villanueva began designing the Central University of Venezuela (UCV)'s University City of Caracas campus in the 1940s, beginning construction in the 1950s[1] during a time of prevailing modernism in Latin America.[2] Villanueva had a stylistic ideology for the project he called the "Synthesis of the Arts"; combining the arts and architecture and creating artistic pieces that could also serve functional purposes.[1][3] Villanueva died in 1975,[4] before Pedro León Zapata began work on Conductores de Venezuela. Zapata was a cartoonist, working for newspaper El Nacional for 50 years, and had also been trained as a painter and muralist. His artwork was characteristically critical of the government, and he often depicted the everyday reality of life for regular Venezuelans. In 2005, he was awarded a PhD by UCV,[5] where he was also a professor.[6]

Design and construction

Part of the design includes a list of 'credits' for the work.

Zapata developed his own mural method, which he used for the work, when he was a student of Diego Rivera in Mexico.[6] He was commissioned by the municipal mayor Antonio Ledezma and the university. In a 2008 interview, Zapata said that they promoted him as the mural's artist by referring to him as a painter, but that they secretly wanted him to make it a cartoon, and so he resolved to make it "a caricature done by a painter".[5] He also said that he "wanted to entertain drivers stuck in traffic".[7]

The mural is made of 45,000 stoneware tiles, each 20 x 20 cm, cooked at the Pienme plant by ceramist Ricardo Ceruzzi, using monocooking furnaces.[8] It was installed by the company Cerámica Carabobo.[9] It is 165 metres long and 11 metres tall[8] and has experienced deterioration since its construction, but has also been the focus of restorers due to being large and popular.[10]

The name translates to "drivers of Venezuela", with the mural depicting historic figures like Simón Bolívar, Simón Rodríguez, Teresa de la Parra, Armando Reverón, and José María Vargas driving vehicles.[10][8]

Response

The mural marks the boundary of the University City of Caracas campus at its northeast and was installed in 1998 and 1999. It is sometimes called Conductores del país and is described as an "open-air gallery" that gives residents of Caracas a "sense of belonging".[10] Zapata said that the mural belongs to all of Caracas,[10] but he loved it dearly himself and said that it was one of the largest murals in Latin America not just in size but for giving him the chance to bring some color to the university he loves, adding that it "took over [his] heart".[11]

Dr. Silvio Llanos de la Hoz commented on the mural, writing that it does not reflect the Synthesis of the Arts in the way the rest of the campus artworks do, and that its message did not have a Kandinsky influence but was more concerned with Venezuela's social present at the time.[12]

Panoramic view of the mural in 2015

References

1. Pintó, Maciá (2008). Jiménez, Ariel (ed.). The Constructive Achievement of Synthesis. Alfredo Boulton and His Contemporaries: Critical Dialogues in Venezuelan Art, 1912–1974. Translated by Kristina Cordero and Catalina Ocampo. Museum of Modern Art. pp. 355–360. ISBN 9780870707100. Archived from the original on 2018-08-28. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
2. Segawa, Hugo (2008). RIO DE JANEIRO, MÉXICO, CARACAS: CIDADES UNIVERSITÁRIAS E MODERNIDADES 1936 - 1962 (in Portuguese). Revista de Urbanismo e Arquitetura. p. 44.
3. Fortini, Vito (2017). The Social Importance of Landscaping in Public Spaces in Latin America: Three Cases Studies in Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela. 7 (10 ed.). L'architettura della città. p. 62. Archived from the original on 2 September 2018. Retrieved 1 September 2018.
4. "Carlos Raúl Villanueva | Venezuelan architect". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-05-31.
5. "Especial | Zapata dejó trazado su ingenio en la historia de Venezuela". Globovisión. Retrieved 2020-05-31.
6. "Pedro León Zapata, el hombre que mejor analizaba a Venezuela en caricaturas". BBC News Mundo (in Spanish). Retrieved 2019-08-17.
7. Maddicks, Russell; Branch Dunsterville, Hilary (2010). Venezuela: the Bradt travel guide (5th ed.). Chalfont, St. Peter: Bradt Travel Guides. p. 109. ISBN 978-1-84162-299-6. OCLC 655670534.
8. "Mural - Conductores de Venezuela. Pedro León Zapata. Caracas - Distrito capital". Cerámica Carabobo (in Spanish). 2016-04-02. Retrieved 2019-08-17.
9. "Revista Aniversario". Cerámica Carabobo. 2012. p. 56. Retrieved 2020-05-31 – via Issuu.
10. "Mural conductores de Venezuela". Caracas en 450. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
11. "Pedro León Zapata, un irreverente que pasó del arte a la caricatura". diariolasamericas.com (in Spanish). Retrieved 2019-08-17.
12. Mujica Jiménez, Arturo Saúl (2011). "Visión ideológica de los medios impresos sobre los petroglifos prehispánicos". Investigación y Postgrado. Caracas. 26 (1). ISSN 1316-0087.