Bartus Bartolomes


Bartolomé Sanchez, better known as Bartus Bartolomes, is an artist born in 1950 in the town of Pregonero, in the state of Táchira, Venezuela. He is currently based in Italy and France. Bartus creates using a wide range of mediums, including painting, drawing, caricature, photography, design, and even poetry. In 1969, he wrote "Kitsch Art", a manifesto promoting street artistic experimentalism.
WWW bartusbartolomes.net

Life and education

Upon completing his secondary education at Colegio de la Salle in the city of San Cristóbal in Venezuela, where he held his first exhibition of paintings when he was 17 years old, Bartus traveled to Europe and lived in Paris from 1968 until 1974, participating in the student movement that generated the Mai 68, and attended the École Normale Supérieure, the École des Beaux Arts and the University of Vincennes, Paris VIII.
His family owned the Sanchez Pernia Estate, one of the largest coffee plantations in the country covering more than 90,000 hectares from 1898 up to the 1960s. However, the newly emerging governments from the 1960s began to expropriate the land.
In the expropriated lands, the government promoted and built the Uribante Caparo Hydroelectric Dam, a project that became detrimental to the eco-systems of three Venezuelan states: Táchira, Mérida and Barinas, decreasing the productivity of the traditionally cultivated areas, affecting the rivers, local plants and bird migrations because this area was a pathway or transit corridor used by migrating birds.
These expropriations and the negative effect they had on the environment he grew up in affected Bartus. He devoted his creativity to establishing links between art and water, and he promoted cultural events that highlight the consequences of human intervention on the environment such as environmental pollution and global warming.
In the early 1970s he published a new manifesto in San Francisco proclaiming Transpositionism: a search on new proposals as symbolic calligraphy, haiku and visual art from which he proposed the new denomination Graphi-kú, a combination between Haiku and Graphic.
In the mid-1970s, he obtained a degree in International Studies from the Central University in Caracas.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was involved with the group Zeta International promoters of the New Visuality or Poesia Visiva with Carlo Marcello Conti, Lamberto Pignotti, Adriano Spatola, Gerard Jaschke, Eugenio Miccini, Luciana Arbizzani, T. Blittersdorf, Graziella Borghesi, and Erio Sughi among many others.
In the mid-1980s, linked to a diplomatic post, he lived in India and China. He exhibited work in New Delhi. Later he studied calligraphy in Beijing, China, and Bantu art in Libreville, Gabon.
Bartus returned to Europe in the mid-1990s and began his project on Global Rights of drinkable water, looking to motivate the international community in the creation of large water caves to fill in periods of drought at 65 countries experiencing shortages of fresh water seasonally and with more intensity in recent years.

Work

As told by French writer Gérard-Georges Lemaire:
Carlo Marcello Conti, art critic, writes:

Exhibitions

Bartus Bartolomes has participated in numerous exhibitions:

2011

Giants in the City, Monumental Sculpture Project, Bayfront Park, Miami, United States.

2012

2013

2014

2015

  • Kontempo Art. January. Coral Gables, Miami, United States.
  • Fiera di Bologna. Campanotto Art Books. January 28 – February 1. Bologna, Italy
  • The Arquitecture of Love Brooklyn Bridge Light Art Project
  • Gender Equality Proposal. New Delhi, India
  • Art for Water. Itinerary Public Project
  • Biennial of Exile and Refugees Art
  • DWN TWN Art Days. 4th Annual Celebration. September 11 – September 13. Bayfront Park, Miami, United States.
  • Bergamo Arte. November. Bergamo. Italy
  • Miami Book Fair. Plunging Ourselves. Indiana, United States
  • ICL Studio. December 4 – December 7. Art Week Basel. Wynwood, Miami, United States

Publications

  • Sushi Poems, 2008.
  • La Saliva del Gorilla, 2010.
  • The horns of the rhinoceros, 2011.
  • Birds Birdy Birding, 2012.
  • Il diluvio è una cicala con le labbra azzurre, 2012.
  • Nightmare in New York, 2014.
  • Plunging Ourselves, 2015.