Medina

Carlos Medina knows where he’s going. From the start he developed his own style and is an outstanding sculptor of geometric abstraction. His inclinations were evident since his student days at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas Cristóbal Rojas de Caracas, where he studied the works of the Russian constructivists, European abstract artists and American art while familiarizing himself with the work of other artists and the ideas expressed in their creations. His thesis on graduating from art school in 1975 was on the Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin, who founded constructivism in 1914. In his research on this, he came to know the work of Kazimir Malevich, the founder of supremacism in 1915. From that moment on he adopted the supremacist axiom that art, being a new form of language, could “express a total system of constructing the world.” In that same year of 1975, he had his first show, held at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas and at the invitation of Sofía Imber, the museum’s director. Here the art and style were already established, which would define his life and work as a sculptor. As he has stated, in addition to Tatlin he was influenced, by the masters of abstract art and constructivism: Alexander Calder, Piet Mondrian, El Lissitzky, Max Bill and Malevich. In his journey from material employed to basic image, Medina has produced a solid body of work.