French tachisme* and art informel*, Angel Hurtado was notable for the improvisational handling of paint and staining of the canvas, and had a decisive impact on Venezuelan abstraction in the late 1950s. Hurtado spent his formative years as an artist in Paris. In 1962 he began a new series with the painting Sign in Space, which paired the gestural* approach of Tachisme with cosmic themes.

Hurtado created picto-graphic “signs in space” through the application of broad, heavy strokes in blacks, browns, and grays, and a dark celestial orb that hangs in the upper left, balanced by a burst of lighter strokes in the upper right. The immediacy of Hurtado’s brushstrokes not only make his process clear but also create a sense of intern...