Fernando Varela (b.1951) born in Montevideo, Uruguay, has been based in Santo Domingo since 1975. His practice, rooted in the writings of Bô Yin Ra and a pursuit of the "perfect" composition, moves between painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, collage, and installation. Formal hallmarks include reiterated ovoids nested in irregular polygons, arranged in mandala-like fields where repetition is a vehicle for variation and metaphysical inquiry. The long-running "Form & Void / Forma y Vacío" body of work began with hand-cut paper collage and has grown into large installation-collages and canvases; its serial logic priviledges rhythm, scale shifts, and the tension between figure and ground.
Institutional collections holding Varela’s work include the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (Montevideo); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Guayaquil and Museo Metropolitano de Quito (Ecuador); Museo de Arte Moderno de Guatemala; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico; Museo de Arte Moderno (Santo Domingo); and Centro León/Eduardo León Jimenes Cultural Center (Santiago, DR).
Recent major exhibitions include:
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Mundos: los tránsitos de Fernando Varela (retrospective), Centro León/Eduardo León Jimenes Cultural Center, Santiago, DR (Apr–Jul 2022), featuring 61 works across painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation.
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Exhibition at the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (MNAV), Montevideo (Mar 2024).
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Form & Void: Fernando Varela & Carmen Herrera, Upsilon Gallery, New York (Feb–Apr 2025).
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Echoes of the Other (solo), Heliconia Projects (Sept 3–30, 2025).
Writers and curators often situate Varela’s practice within the spiritual lineage of abstraction—comparable to, yet distinct from, figures such as Rothko, Pollock, and de Kooning—emphasizing his fusion of sacred geometry, architectural structure, and esoteric symbolism into a clear and deeply personal visual idiom.