Henrique Faria New York is pleased to present Where Have All The Flowers Gone?, Valerie Brathwaite’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. This presentation brings together a selection of works in different media that span from the late 1960s to 2021. The exhibition takes its title from a piece created by Brathwaite in 2018-2019, named after the widely interpreted song of the same name written in 1955 by Peter Seeger, that closely relates to the cyclical nature of life and art.

Valerie Marie Brathwaite was born in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago, in 1940. She came of age as an artist in Europe during her formative years while studying interior design and art at Hornsey College of Art and The Royal College of Art in London, and at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris between 1959 and 1964. Encouraged by Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt), a fellow female immigrant artist whom she had met during a visit to Caracas in 1969, Brathwaite moved to Venezuela that same year where she was introduced to prominent curators and critics such as Miguel Arroyo, Lourdes Blanco, Roberto Guevara and Marta Traba who became great supporters of her work. 

Over the course of her more than 50 year career, Valerie Brathwaite’s practice has drawn inspiration mainly from nature. First and foremost a sculptor, she creates forms of organic abstraction using simple sculptural volumes and sinuous lines resembling the flora, fauna and landscape of the Caribbean and South America. Written on the occasion of Brathwaite's first museum solo show, titled Sculptures by Valerie Brathwaite, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas in 1975, art critic Juan Calzadilla describes in the catalogue’s essay some of the characteristics of classical works of sculpture and works by Brathwaite. He writes: “Ancient artists like Polykleitos and more recent figures like Alberto Giacometti make use of a vertical form in sculpture akin to living bodies. Valerie Brathwaite has transformed sculpture by means of a new horizontal dynamic that does away with classical postures, both heroic and reclining, that have been passed on from the Greeks. She gives sculpture a new “aesthetic of the crawling,” eschewing tradition and placing “the terrestrial” at the core of South American culture.” This text by Calzadilla is one of the first essays on Valerie Brathwaite published in the country. The text addresses a particular stage in the work of the artist, one in which the horizontal is used to recreate natural phenomena such as the flow of magma and the formation of mountains. Emphasizing on the horizontal direction of Brathwaite’s sculpture, critic and art historian Cecilia Fajardo-Hill further expands, “For her 1975 solo show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas, her sculptures were displayed directly on the floor emphasizing the horizontal rather that the typical vertical axis of sculpture, evoking the landscape and geological formations, leading Juan Calzadilla to describe them as an affirmation of the terrestrial, of humus, of magma, of bubbles, of bark, as the creation of shapes that were novel and groundbreaking.”

Brathwaite had a profound academic training in sculpture working with artists such as Hubert Dalwood in London and Ossip Zadkine in Paris during a time when sculpture was evolving from modern to contemporary. Fajardo-Hill adds, "Her choice of form and motifs, as well as materials, surpasses the boundaries of tradition. They range from established to experimental, including concrete, plaster, clay, aluminum, bronze, silver, soft sculptures of stuffed fabric, and more recently MDF, demonstrating both freedom and resourcefulness in materiality and making. Brathwaite’s use of colors, often bright and found in nature, are fundamental in embracing the form and are often applied in layers to become an integral element of the sculpture. Her deployment of color is a surprising and unconventional feature of her work, as modelled sculpture is hardly ever polychrome; making her stand out from her teachers and peers since the 1960s. One of the features that makes Brathwaite’s work so exceptional is that it is not possible to identify clear influences in her work, either early on in her career or as a mature artist. Nevertheless, it is fruitful to recognize important relations and closeness with key international and Venezuelan artists without prescribing direct influences. For example, the organic nature of Brathwaite’s volumes dialogues with the sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, Jean Arp, and Hubert Dalwood; the sensuality of her voluptuous forms converses with the work by Louise Bourgeois, Niki de Saint Phalle, Ana Mendieta’s late work, and Margot Römer; and the grounded horizontality of much of her work speaks with artists such as Henry Moore.” 

Valerie Brathwaite gained Venezuelan citizenship in 1989. She lives and works in Caracas to this day.