El Pavero

Francisco Fernández (1897-1990)

His full name was Francisco Fernández Rodríguez. Venezuelan painter, member of the landscape movement known as Escuela de Caracas. In 1909 he began his artistic studies under the guidance of Professor Eugenio Montaya. In 1911, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Caracas, where he was taught by Antonio Herrera Toro.

In 1924 he returned to Venezuela and due to economic reasons, he was forced to alternate his pictorial activity with work in official institutions and organizations. Once in the country, he demonstrated to bring very solid knowledge and a definite orientation towards the landscape, for which he is often placed among with the generation of painters who continued the tradition of the Círculo de Bellas Artes and that Enrique Planchart called the “School of Caracas”.

At the beginning of 1961 he settled permanently in Caracas, dedicating himself completely to pictorial activities. He continued the landscape tradition begun in the XIX century by international painters such as Ferdinand Bellermann, Fritz George Melbye, Camille Pizarro and Joseph Thomas, as well as the Venezuelan painters Ramón Irazábal, Ramón Bolet, Jesús María de las Casas, among others; who captured in their works various aspects of the city's landscape, as well as the customs from different regions of the country.

Among his national landscapes one can appreciate many regions of Venezuela, and especially of Caracas and its surroundings; among them, the "El Ávila" mountain, which was a point of constant interest for Fernández. In these canvases, the light, the color and the expression of the drawing are perfectly defined. "Piedra Azul" is an example of this.

SOURCE: EcuRed (translated)