Three Marching Figures

An essential Venezuelan modern artist, Héctor Poleo drew on social realism and Mexican muralism. In the early nineteen- forties, after a number of trips to Andean Ecuador, Colombia, and—mostly—San Rafael de Mucuchíes in Andean Venezuela, he began including images of peasants from that region in his art (a theme in keeping with social realism and muralism). Both the title of "Tres figuras en marcha" and the bodily stance of the figures in it suggest a resolute intention to move forward. Notwithstanding, they have an air of mystery; the relationship between the woman at the head of the trio and the man at its center is uncertain. The branch she is clutching and with which she seems to guide the masculine figure is the only suggestion of the tie between them. That connecting branch, along with the expression on the man’s face, might be a reference to visual impairment—a theme Poleo engaged at different phases of his production, undoubtedly because of his own compromised vision from the time he was a child.