DAMASO-
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On the left, Carlos Contramaestre.
On the right, Dámaso Ogaz.
File: Ana Victoria Sánchez
On the right, Dámaso Ogaz.
File: Ana Victoria Sánchez
“Of the many artistic Venezuelan movements that conferred their peculiar note to the tumultuous sixties in Caracas, there was one that stood out for its violence, its anarchic spirit, a voluntary public aggression, making the provocation "an instrument of human research." It was the one which called itself very freely The Roof of the Whale.
Equally or more important than those noisy conditions, which defined it as an explosion rather than a school or a coherent aesthetic, was its ability to unite for a short time a group of young artists among whom are some of the storytellers and poets that would carry out the contemporary literary renewal in Venezuela. The fact that in this movement have taken part, with varying degrees of participation, writers such as Adriano González León or Salvador Garmendia that would become central figures in the new narrative prose of the country, or poets like Juan Calzadilla, Francisco Pérez Perdomo, Efrain Hurtado, Caupolicán Ovalles, Damaso Ogaz, Edmundo Aray, among others, proves the magnetization shown in the first half of the sixties of The Roof of the Whale, which can be more enhanced if you add the vital contribution lent by artists such as Jacobo Borges and Carlos Contramaestre, the latter being the one who more conspicuously defined its original features and some of its central artistic positions.
The movement was formed in early 1961. In March of that year it opened, in a simple garage at the neighborhood El Conde, in Caracas, an exhibition entitled "To restore the Magma" and published its first manifesto, which was just a folded sheet under the title Scratched on the Roof, while in the newspaper "La Esfera" was released a short program. This opening was followed by various activities: statements, flyers, small "plaquettes" of poetry and prose, with a visible and unusual trend towards apodictic theorizing that found in the manifest its instrument of choice and revealed the avant-garde position assumed by its members.
But its central landmarks were represented by art exhibitions, two of which reached resonance. The "Tribute to the kitsch" (June 1961), which was introduced as "a gesture of open protest to the permanent and irrevocable country's cultural farce" or, in the version of Caupolicán Ovalles, as a "testimony about fakes that pretended to be committed and makers of culture " was the first attempt to demolish the petite bourgeois conception that dominated the Venezuelan culture to the extent of permeate not only its
Equally or more important than those noisy conditions, which defined it as an explosion rather than a school or a coherent aesthetic, was its ability to unite for a short time a group of young artists among whom are some of the storytellers and poets that would carry out the contemporary literary renewal in Venezuela. The fact that in this movement have taken part, with varying degrees of participation, writers such as Adriano González León or Salvador Garmendia that would become central figures in the new narrative prose of the country, or poets like Juan Calzadilla, Francisco Pérez Perdomo, Efrain Hurtado, Caupolicán Ovalles, Damaso Ogaz, Edmundo Aray, among others, proves the magnetization shown in the first half of the sixties of The Roof of the Whale, which can be more enhanced if you add the vital contribution lent by artists such as Jacobo Borges and Carlos Contramaestre, the latter being the one who more conspicuously defined its original features and some of its central artistic positions.
The movement was formed in early 1961. In March of that year it opened, in a simple garage at the neighborhood El Conde, in Caracas, an exhibition entitled "To restore the Magma" and published its first manifesto, which was just a folded sheet under the title Scratched on the Roof, while in the newspaper "La Esfera" was released a short program. This opening was followed by various activities: statements, flyers, small "plaquettes" of poetry and prose, with a visible and unusual trend towards apodictic theorizing that found in the manifest its instrument of choice and revealed the avant-
But its central landmarks were represented by art exhibitions, two of which reached resonance. The "Tribute to the kitsch" (June 1961), which was introduced as "a gesture of open protest to the permanent and irrevocable country's cultural farce" or, in the version of Caupolicán Ovalles, as a "testimony about fakes that pretended to be committed and makers of culture " was the first attempt to demolish the petite bourgeois conception that dominated the Venezuelan culture to the extent of permeate not only its
“¿Why the whale? Just because of that. It would have been easy to choose the alligator. Or because it had been of aesthetes gentlemen to choose the hippocampus. And also, because the whale is in the midst of goodness and horror, subject to all solicitations of earth and heaven, with its worthy belly that laughs at Jonah and swallows an oil tanker, all extended from end to end of the Earth, which is almost the Earth itself or is the tiny bird pecking its decayed tooth in which fishes swim. "
Adriano González León
The Roof of the Whale -
Postcard from The Roof of the Whale File: Ana Victoria Sánchez
On the left, Dámaso Ogaz.
On the right, Carlos Contramaestre.
File: Ana Victoria Sánchez
On the right, Carlos Contramaestre.
File: Ana Victoria Sánchez
official manifestations but also the opposites ones. More effective, the scandalous exhibition of Carlos Contramaestre, "Homage to necrophilia"(November 1961) marked the apex of the movement and its fullest exercise of provocation because it got the desired response from the outraged bourgeoisie of Caracas to whom it was addressed the exhibition.
Just three years after its establishment, The Roof of the Whale began to disintegrate after publishing its ambitious third artistic manifesto, Scratched on the Roof No. 3 (1964). However, its most tenacious leaders (Carlos Contramaestre and Edmundo Aray) gave it an irregular survival that almost covered the entire decade of the sixties, appealing to the running of art galleries, informal art exhibitions, literary publications marked by a surreal tone that began to become outdated as the political-cultural complex that had fostered the movement dissolved, but spread its generator principles along with a predictable rhetoricalization.
When in 1968, after a period of intensified editorial activity, The Roof of the Whale published its volume “Salve, amigo, salve, y adiós”, with contributions from Edmundo Aray, Efrain Hurtado, Juan Calzadilla, Dámaso Ogaz, Javier Domingo, Marcia Leyseca, Carlos Contramaestre, Tancredo Romero, it can be considered that it closed its cycle. Its members have been scattering, grouping in different ways, forming other groups with new ideological definitions or following individual paths based on their own artistic creation ... "
When in 1968, after a period of intensified editorial activity, The Roof of the Whale published its volume “Salve, amigo, salve, y adiós”, with contributions from Edmundo Aray, Efrain Hurtado, Juan Calzadilla, Dámaso Ogaz, Javier Domingo, Marcia Leyseca, Carlos Contramaestre, Tancredo Romero, it can be considered that it closed its cycle. Its members have been scattering, grouping in different ways, forming other groups with new ideological definitions or following individual paths based on their own artistic creation ... "
From the Foreword of “Anthology of The Roof of the Whale” Ángel Rama. FUNDARTE, Caracas, 1987
To learn more about "The Roof of the Whale" we recommend reading the following books:
- Anthology of The Roof of the Whale, Angel Rama, Fundarte, Caracas, 1987
- Stridency and irony: the Roof of the Whale. Venezuelan avant-garde group (1961-1969). Héctor Brioso Santos, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain. 2002.
- The Roof of the Whale (1961-1969) Anthology, Juan Calzadilla et al, Monte Ávila Editores, Caracas, 2008
Ogaz’ drawing -
