The Otazzo Cultural Association, chaired by Jorge Fernández Giner, seeks a definitive location for the huge artistic and cultural legacy of the versatile artist, muralist and sculptor Antonio Otazzo, born in La Orotava in 1929 and living in Venezuela for more than 60 years, where he He earned the artistic nickname the Dalí of America. Fernández Giner considers «urgent» to have in La Orotava «a suitable space not only to deposit the already restored work, but also to continue inventorying and working in condition with the rest of his legacy. Apart from finding accommodation for its more than 400 paintings and canvases, this group wants to have a space that “has the possibility of housing their sculptures and their personal library, made up of about 800 books, as well as an archive and study center in the that to be able to analyze all his personal manuscripts that are of great value to be able to know in depth his life and work ».
More than 400 large-format paintings and canvases; 31 sculptural pieces; about 500 plates and sketches; about a thousand books, and other personal objects arrived in Tenerife from Venezuela in 2016. A bumpy return trip to much of the work of an artist who in 1954 decided to emigrate to the South American country, where he was assassinated in July of 2020, during an assault on his home.
Antonio Otazzo was born in 1929 in La Orotava, and he died at the age of 91 in the city of Cagua, in the Venezuelan state of Aragua. He was an outstanding contemporary artist, who was always compared to Salvador Dalí for “his sense of art and his eccentric personality”, which strengthened the parallelism between the two Spanish artists. Otazzo’s creativity was overwhelming, a fact shown by his commitment to other artistic expressions such as muralism or illustration, but to his sculptural works and other literary works linked to poetry and philosophy.
The Otazzo Cultural Association intends to take the exhibition of 21 paintings that was recently shown at the Liceo Taoro Society to other municipalities to make Otazzo known in the rest of the island of Tenerife. The next stop will be in the Villa de Arafo, due to the relationship that Otazzo had with this municipality through his grandfather Aarón Luis Otazo Marrero.
The mayor of La Orotava, Francisco Linares (CC), has expressed on several occasions his wish that Otazzo’s work can be exhibited in a space in La Orotava, his hometown, and appreciated the commitment and work of his family and the Otazzo Cultural Association, which continues with your goals of protecting and preserving the work of this great artist. The Canarian Orotava Foundation for the History of Science has announced its intention to create a museum dedicated to scientific travelers who visited the islands throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, and the Otazzo Museum is the next city museum aspiration. More than 2,000 people passed through the exhibition at the Liceo Taoro for a month. Among the visitors, students from the La Milagrosa school in La Orotava and from the NGO Coliseo Association, which works for the integration and training of young sub-Saharan immigrants.
The aforementioned cultural association has hired the services of a graduate in Fine Arts, restorer by profession, whose job has consisted of inventorying Otazzo’s work brought from Venezuela, making the technical and conservation sheets for each of the canvases. So far, more than a hundred have been inventoried, all prior to 2005. This professional has been in charge of cleaning, eliminating folds and adding perimeter bands to each of the canvases to tighten them. In addition, it has made noble wood frames, with the aim that woodworm does not affect these works in the future.
