Alirio Palacios

Born in Volcán, near Tucupita, state of Delta Amacuro, Venezuela, in 1938. From 1954 to 1960 he studies in the School of Pictorial and Applied Arts of Caracas in the areas of Pure Art and Graphic Art. In 1959 he travels to Vienna as a representative of Venezuela at the 7th World Festival of Youth and Students. Between 1961 and 1966 he studies engraving (water-based xylography) at the Fine Arts University of Peking. Back in Caracas, in 1966-1968 he collaborates with the Design Workshop of the National Institute of Culture and Fine Arts (INCIBA), along with Alejandro Otero. He projects the model and acts as Design Director for the Caracas Athenaeum's Papeles magazine.

He projects the Imagen magazine and becomes part of its staff along with Simón Alberto Consalvi, Guillermo Sucre and Esdras Parra. He is invited by Poland's Ministry of Culture to study in Warsaw. On his way from Caracas to the Polish capital he visits New York. He lives in Poland from 1968 to 1970. He studies metal engraving and lithography at the University of Warsaw. He works at professor Ruzinski's Visual Graphics Workshop in the area of etching. At the same time he works at Henri Tomaszewski's and H. Zelek's Design Workshop. He carries out an apprenticeship at the etching workshops of the Arts Academy of West Berlin. In 1972 he travels to Switzerland where he works and studies for two years. He is an investigator at the Centre De Gravure Contemporaine in Geneva. In 1974-1975 he returns to Poland and stays at Cracow, in whose University he studies the mezzotinta technique. He finishes his studies and returns to Venezuela. Back in his country he is in charge of the design of the National Culture Magazine and starts teaching illustration and engraving at the Neumann Design Institute. In 1985 he travels to New York to take intensive courses on etching and study film direction. He installs a workshop in Soho. He is appointed cultural advisor of the Venezuelan Consulate in that city. From this year and up to the present he lives between New York and Caracas.

In 1987 he becomes a member of Venezuela's UN Permanent Mission as Cultural Advisory Minister. The following years he carries out investigative journeys to Nepal and India to inspect the stone sculptors at the Khajuraho Temple; to Java, Indonesia, to study the stone sculptures at Borobudur's great temple; to Egypt to observe the great stone sculpture museum at Cairo. 

His prolific catalog includes drawing, etching—he is acknowledged as one of the major exponents of this art in his country—painting and sculpture. He has participated in most of the national salons, while exhibiting in private as well as public spaces and museums in Shanghai, Peking, Hong Kong, Warsaw, Surinam, Lausanne, Edinburgh, Vienna, Zurich, Geneva, Bradford, Hauterives, Sofia, Florence, Madrid, New York, Florida, Washington, Chicago, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Havana, Cali, Bogotá, among many other cities. Among many acknowledgments received, he is granted the National Prize for the Arts, Caracas. His oeuvre is represented in national and international museums, embassies and universities, as well as in private and public institutions. His works have been auctioned in New York City since 1985 by such firms as Sotheby's and Christie's.