Visibilia Caracas is the name associated with a landmark 1966 project by German-born Venezuelan designer Gerd Leufert, presented as an exhibition at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas and as a companion book of the same name. The project centered on a collection of 73 graphic marks and symbols Leufert created between the 1940s and the first half of the 1960s, and it is widely regarded as a foundational moment for graphic design in Venezuela.[1]
Design and History
Leufert, who moved to Caracas in 1951 and helped establish the country’s graphic design profession, produced a series of “emblematic forms” that he presented in three individual exhibitions at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, the first of which was Visibilia in 1966.[2] The exhibition and the accompanying book, both titled Visibilia, showcased 73 marks selected from Leufert’s broader output.[1]
The book, published by the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas in 1966, contains 8 folios of text and 56 serigraph plates. It was printed in an edition of 300 copies, with 100 printed on special paper, numbered and signed by the artist. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a copy of this first edition, gifted by Leufert in 1970.[3] The book’s design was by Larry June, with serigraphs by Tamigraf.[4]
In 2014, to mark the centenary of Leufert’s birth, the Galería Venezolana de Diseño undertook a comprehensive research and digital reconstruction project of the 73 marks, and an exhibition of the same name was presented.[1]
Meaning and Symbolism
Alfredo Chacón, the poet and anthropologist who wrote the essay “Visibilia en el punto neutro de la figuración” (published in 1982), described Leufert’s Visibilia images as not classifiable as either emblems or paintings, but rather as a negation of these forms of expression or means of communication.[4] The project’s conceptual ambition was to legitimize graphic design and visual communication as intellectual, avant-garde disciplines within the Venezuelan museum context.[4]
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