Miguel von Dangel, minimal chronology

1946
Born in Bayreuth, Germany. His mother, Susanne Hertrich, a descendant of a German family of Lutheran pastors, and his father Félix Dangel, a Polish aristocrat.

1950
Attracted by a job offer from the government of Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, Baron Félix Dangel, a zoologist and taxidermist, arrives in Venezuela with his wife and son to fill a vacancy at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Caracas. On the way, General Delgado Chalbaud is assassinated, disrupting the immigrant couple's plans. The family settles in Petare, an emerging popular suburb that will eventually become one of the largest neighborhoods in Latin America.

1963
Following his early artistic inclinations, Miguel von Dangel enrolls in the Cristóbal Rojas School of Plastic Arts, where he stays for a couple of years. Luis Guevara Moreno, Luis Domínguez Salazar, Rafael Ramón González, and Ramón Vásquez Brito, artists and teachers of impeccable careers, encourage the young man to continue exploring his creative concerns. Additionally, he studies taxidermy on his own, the art of giving life to animals after death.

1965
He meets Bárbaro Rivas, a popular painter with a high mystical flight. The artist would later say: “It was fundamental for me to meet that old man in Petare. He was very chaotic and a great artist. So I said to myself: ‘What he does in his shack, I can do in my house, and if he doesn’t die of hunger, I won’t die of hunger either.’ And I locked myself in my house.” That same year, he leaves the School of Plastic Arts, and his training becomes self-taught, always marked by searches of a religious nature.

He exhibits for the first time in a collective show alongside students from Professor Luis Guevara Moreno's workshop. He participates in the I Salon of Youth Painting, where he receives the Honor Mention for the First Prize for the oil painting Virgen morena. His first solo exhibition takes place at the Maraury Society of Petare, featuring ducos, oils, and woodcuts.

1966
Second solo exhibition at the Espiral Gallery in Caracas with drawings and paintings. He begins traveling to the Amazon, where he establishes close contact with the Panares, Piaroas, and Makiritares indigenous peoples, a fundamental influence on his work. With the indigenous populations, he deepens his passion for animals, landscapes, indigenous mythology, and craftsmanship.

1967
Third solo exhibition at the Leoncio Martínez Theater in Los Rosales. Of this exhibition, Sofía Ímber, an tireless cultural promoter, would say: “Von Dangel translates a whole subjective world, rich in suggestive images and vigorous in color and form. Sometimes a bit confusing. Other times he achieves beautiful harmony. The 37 works of Von Dangel deserve to be seen.”

1969
Sacrifixiones at the XX2 Gallery and Paintings and Objects at the Helena Pávlu Gallery, both in Caracas. These exhibitions included object pieces reminiscent of syncretic religious altars, made with waste materials, taxidermied animals, and pigments. With these pieces, the artist aims to “find in the invention of the object the laws with which nature transforms, organizes, represents, and symbolically fixes itself in the human spirit,” as noted by critic Juan Calzadilla in the catalog of Sacrifixiones.

1970
Participates in the collective exhibition Twenty Works of Young Venezuelan Artists, sponsored by the National Institute of Culture and Fine Arts, which travels to Miami and Jamaica.

1971: Conducts painting workshops at the Planchart Reception Center for Minors in Caracas.

1972
As part of the IX Latin American Psychoanalysis Congress, he presents to the public his Spiritual Portrait of a Time, a taxidermy sculpture of a crucified dog. The scandal arose when the parish priest of the Caracas Cathedral attacked the piece with his staff, throwing it from an upper floor while shouting “¡Sacrilege!”. Critics take sides: some support the conservative attitude of the priest, while others, with better insight, recognize the fervently religious attitude and talent of the young artist.

1974
Exhibits paintings and objects at Casa Guillo in Maracaibo, and drawings and inks at the Gallery The Bird That Rained, in Caracas. Receives the Second Prize at the II Avellán Salon for his sculpture La marihuana.

1976
Completes the three sculptures of the set Characters for a Common Place, life-size, made with waste materials and marked by an expressionist style, opening a new path for Venezuelan sculpture.

1977
Exhibits at the Central University of Venezuela Scorpions of Venezuela, polychrome drawings in homage to entomologist Manuel González Sponga, resulting from his research on tropical fauna following his travels across the national territory. The mentioned entomologist names a specimen found by the artist and previously unrecorded as Mesotityus Vondangeli.

1979
On pentagram paper, presents Musical Drawings at the Félix Gallery, Caracas. These are ink drawings that establish a dialogue between the depicted figures and the sound that emanates from the support. Participates in Many Types in Eleven Types, organized by Sala Mendoza. There, he shows his drawn Diaries, consisting of 150 meters of a strip of paper richly worked with paints. The intersection between the written image and the painted word, which so obsesses the artist, begins to manifest.

1981
First trip to Europe: England, Germany, Holland, France, and Italy. Pilgrimages to the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar to see Mathias Grunewald's Crucifixion. “Then I went to Holland to see Van Gogh. In the little town of Arnhem, I was defeated by more than 100 paintings made by our friend,” he notes later.

1982
Completes the monumental Portrait of My Mother, one of his most complex works due to its rich symbolism. Presents Three Approaches to the Venezuelan Landscape at the Sala Mendoza in Caracas, where he shows his “casts” in gold and silver, delicate sculptures of scorpions, snakes, and bromeliads cast in precious metals; and also the encapsulated pieces, acrylic works that freeze a piece of land and a moment in time. Participates in the I Francisco Narváez Sculpture Biennial on Margarita Island.

Drawings on Maps of Venezuela at the Félix Gallery in Caracas, where again a dialogue is established between the image and the support: geographical maps of various regions of Venezuelan territory from which species of wild tropical fauna finely colored emerge.

1983
Participates in the 17th São Paulo Biennial with The Return of the Fourth Ship, a sculptural set measuring 10x5 meters. The work presents the myth of a fourth Spanish caravel that got lost on its way to America and reappeared 400 years later, making the journey in reverse, heading to Europe, laden with all the density of the American territory. 

From his relationship with Alessandra Vassallo, his daughter Andrea Salomé is born.

1984
Completes the series From the Transparency of a Woman's Womb, regarding the birth of his only daughter. It consists of seven wooden boxes with acrylic inlays that encapsulate elements of deep significance, linked to fertility and femininity.

1985
Finishes the Monument, a rearing taxidermied horse of atrocious appearance, whose torso is made from an oil barrel. It is a metaphor for the ghost of the procerato and the rich and decadent oil country that constrains Venezuelan history. Presents the solo exhibition 7x7 crucifixions and no redemption, at Sala Interalúmina in Puerto Ordaz, Bolívar state.

1986
Participates in the collective exhibition The Indigenous Cultures of the Amazon, at the Museum of America in Madrid. Opens the solo exhibition Transfigurations, at the Sotavento Gallery, Caracas.

1987
Three Venezuelans in Two Dimensions, alongside Ernesto León and Carlos Zerpa, at The American Society Art Gallery, New York. At the Artisnativa Gallery in Caracas, the series From the Flight of the Birds of the New World surprises with its rich chromatic explosion, which will be characteristic of the artist's work henceforth.

1989
Starting from a photograph of his family group taken by artist Andrés Lander, Von Dangel develops The Holy Family, a set of 20 works adorned with animal skins and elements of different kinds, bathed in a multicolored beam of light. Opens to the public the solo exhibition Sacrofanías, at the Armitano Art Center, Caracas.

1990
Since 1984, he has been working on his version of The Battle of San Romano, by Paolo Uccello. In this vast frieze (40 x 3.5 meters), the artist exposes the immense wealth and violence of the American continent, embodied in the battle between the Reyó warriors (indigenous people of the Amazon) and the European condottieri. This year he receives the National Prize for Plastic Arts, the highest award an artist can aspire to in Venezuela. He also receives the Award from the International Association of Art Critics, Venezuela Chapter.

1992
On the occasion of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, he participates in the exhibition Eco Art, at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and wins one of the top prizes.

1993
Represents Venezuela at the XLV Venice Biennale with The Battle of San Romano.

1993
At the Mario Abreu Contemporary Art Museum in Maracay, Aragua state, he inaugurates Of Deceptions and Other Struggles, a set of large paintings and sculptures related to the world of bullfighting, animal sacrifice, and the Spanish presence in America. The Polar Foundation publishes the book Miguel von Dangel and The Battle of San Romano, with texts by Francisco Márquez and excerpts from the artist's diaries.

1994
Anthological Exhibition 1963-1993 at the National Art Gallery, where “we pay tribute to his significant career, while showing the public one of the most original, brave, beautiful, and terrible interpretations of our myths, religion, nature, and history,” as stated in the exhibition catalog. The book Miguel von Dangel the Child, an approach to the artist's childhood written by Victoria De Stefano, is presented.

1995
On the occasion of the death of his friend, he presents The Eloquence of Silence, Tribute to Emerio Darío Lunar, at the Euro-American Art Center in Caracas. Also Ostentatio Vulnerum, at Simón Bolívar University, in tribute to the 25th anniversary of its foundation.

1996
Exhibits at Charon’s Boat Ambrosino Gallery, Miami, a series of intervened maps. MvD: masks, simulacra, and simulations of the image, at Sotage: Center for Modern Art, in Lechería, Anzoátegui state.

1997
Axis Mundi, at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá, Colombia, a show consisting of 35 medium and large format works. Inaugurates Emblematic America, in Valencia, Venezuela, where he insists on the link between pictorial image and written word. Publishes The Thought of the Image, a book that collects press articles, lectures, and essays authored by him.

1998
Lastenia Tello: the saga of a passion, at the Arturo Michelena Museum. A set of variations on a well-known fabric from the Venezuelan pictorial tradition.

1999
Completes the series 33 Masks of Christ, where he presents a playful and critical religious discourse based on the masking of the quintessential icon of Christianity. The Sofia Ímber Contemporary Art Museum in Caracas acquires one of these pieces.

2001
Receives the Annual Plastic Arts Award “Pedro Ángel González,” awarded by the Metropolitan Mayor's Office of Caracas.

2003
The edition of the Ibero-American Art Fair in Caracas pays tribute to him for his career. Completes the work April 11, a lucid interpretation of the political disturbances in Venezuela during the year 2002.

2007
Tauromaquia, a tribute to Francisco de Goya, at the Medicci Gallery in Caracas.

2008
Completes the Desesperanto, his magnum opus, according to the artist, a project begun in 2002. It consists of 100 books that unfold as the pages are turned. In them, we find recognizable icons of universal history interwoven with writing revisited time and again, revealing a reading of the world through the prism of autocracy. It is a project under continuous revision, which must be digitized and uploaded to the web to function as a portal against censorship and dictatorships.

2009
Utopia, at the Medicci Gallery in Caracas, consisting of 18 works that revisit the eponymous work of Thomas More from a personal and particular cartography.

2010
Receives the National Armando Reverón Award granted by the Venezuelan Association of Plastic Artists (AVAP).

2012
The biographical book Miguel von Dangel and the Renaissance of a Latin American Art, by Eddy Reyes Torres, is published.

2014
Petare De Civitate Dei, an exhibition held at the Museum of Popular Art of Petare Bárbaro Rivas composed of 30 works inspired by “The City of God” by Saint Augustine. It serves the artist to pay tribute to Petare on its 393rd anniversary of foundation and to point out, in his own words, social decomposition as a disease that we must overcome through creation and goodwill.

2015
Shows his Aphrodisiac Drawings at the Nelson Garrido Organization (NGO) and at the Lugar Común Bookstore in Altamira, both in Caracas.

2017
The Table is Set, an exhibition of 100 drawings presented at the Lugar Común Bookstores in Pampatar, Nueva Esparta state, and Altamira, Caracas.

2021
Marries Elisa Zambrano.

2021
Passes away on July 25 at the University Clinical Hospital, Caracas.