Clever Lara (born 26 November 1952) is a

Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...

an plastic artist, teacher, and curator. He made his first studies of painting in his hometown of

Rivera Rivera () is the capital of Rivera Department of Uruguay. The border with Brazil joins it with the Brazilian city of Santana do Livramento, which is only a street away from it, at the north end of Route 5. Together, they form an urban area of aro ...

with the master

Osmar Santos Osmar Santos (born July 28, 1949) is a former painter and journalist from Brazil. He was a very successful radio and television sports commentator in the 1980s and early 1990s, known for his outstanding verbal fluency (estimated at over one hun ...

. From 1964 to 1968 he attended the workshop in

Montevideo Montevideo () is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 1,319,108 (about one-third of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...

. Between 1975 and 1979 he taught at the Institute of Fine Arts San Francisco de Asís. He then set up his own teaching workshop in Montevideo, where he has trained many artists, a task that he continues with today. In 1983 he received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

, with which he studied metal engraving in

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

and Valdottavo-Luca, Italy, with

Luis Camnitzer Luis Camnitzer (born November 6, 1937) is a German-born Uruguayan artist, curator, art critic, and academic who was at the forefront of 1960s Conceptual Art. Camnitzer works primarily in sculpture, printmaking, and installation, exploring topic ...

. He represented his country at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

in 1986 and at the

São Paulo Biennial SAO or Sao may refer to: Places * Sao civilisation, in Middle Africa from 6th century BC to 16th century AD * Sao, a town in Boussé Department, Burkina Faso * Saco Transportation Center (station code SAO), a train station in Saco, Maine, U.S. ...

in 1981 and 1994 and received numerous national and international awards. In 1988, Lara was distinguished by the Fund for Artists Colonies, United States, and in 2001 he received the

Figari Award The Figari Award ( es, Premio Figari) is given annually to visual artists from Uruguay in recognition of their careers. It was instituted in 1995 by the Central Bank of Uruguay, at the initiative of the then president of the institution, economis ...

in recognition of his career.

Work

Lara's work is in a naturalist style – large canvases in which the paint drips and fades into the margins, creating an aura of dreamlike unreality. He composes

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

s in which he integrates various recovered objects such as broken dolls, cardboard, wool balls, belts of pre-Columbian fabrics, boards, and brooms. He configures his creations with abandoned trivial objects, generating a reflective look at human waste.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lara, Clever 1952 births 20th-century Uruguayan painters Uruguayan male artists 20th-century Uruguayan male artists Living people People from Rivera Department Male painters