| Patricia Van Dalen
Patricia Van Dalen was born in the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo in 1955. She earned a degree in graphic design from the Instituto de Diseño Fundación Neumann-IDD (Neumann Foundation Design Institute), in Caracas in 1977. Between 1980 and 1986, she trained and worked in Paris under the renowned kinetic artist Yaakov Agam, assisting him in the creation of the “Agam Method of Visual Education” for children. She has long been interested in abstraction, color, and the intervention of large architectural spaces, and her most recent work explores the idea of fragmentation as it affects form, space, and color.
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Van Dalen’s work has been the subject of many individual exhibitions in
spaces in Venezuela such as Galería La Cuadra (2010), Sala TAC (2008),
Galería 39 (2004), Museo de los Niños (1999), Universidad Simón
Bolívar (1998), Sala Mendoza (1993), Sala RG-Casa Rómulo Gallegos
(1991), Galería Uno (1990), Galería Siete/Siete (1987), and Galería
Minotauro (1985), in Caracas; Centro de Bellas Artes (1988), in
Maracaibo; and in the U.S., in the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden
(2003), in Coral Gables, Florida. She has also participated in numerous
group exhibitions, including the Salón Nacional de Jóvenes Artistas,
La Nueva Naturaleza, the Bienal de Guayana, the Salón Aragua, the
Salón Michelena, and the Salón Nacional de Artes Visuales, in
Venezuela; the Grands et Jeunes d’Aujourd’hui Salon in Paris; Novos
Valores da Arte Latino-Americana, in Brasilia; the Bienal de Estand-
artes, in Tijuana, Mexico; and the Bienal Barro de América Roberto
Guevara, held in Caracas, Maracaibo and Sâo Paulo. She has earned
various awards throughout her career, among them the second prize at the
II Bienal de Artes Visuales Christian Dior (Caracas, 1991), and the
first prize at the I Salón Nacional de Artes Visuales (Caracas, 1992),
as well as the first place in a 2001 competition for the commission of a
public mural along the Prados del Este Highway in Caracas, which she
then completed in 2005; and the 2010 Established Artist AICA Award,
International Association of Art Critics, Venezuela Chapter.
Apart from works on canvas and paper, Van Dalen has produced several
ephemeral site-specific installations, some of them large-scale, in
Brazil, Spain, Venezuela, and the United States. The most recent one,
Fragmented Light (2011) was specifically designed for display at the
Miller Learning Center of the University of Georgia, in Athens (GA),
USA. Her interest in the intervention of architectural spaces is
similarly evident in permanent works created for private residences in
Caracas and Maracay in Venezuela, and also in Miami, USA, as well as
public murals such as Jardín Lumínico (Luminous Garden) and Pajaritos
(Little Birds), in Caracas, and Jardín de Calas (Calla Lilies Garden), a
mosaic-floor at the new public square in the remote Caribbean village
of Río Caribe, in eastern Venezuela.
Van Dalen has taught at the Instituto de Diseño Fundación Neumann-IDD
and the School of Architecture at the Universidad Central de Venezuela,
and often conducts color workshops at various educational and cultural
institutions. Please visit her website at www.patriciavandalen.com
