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Valerie Brathwaite, Sculptor Who Merged Bodies and Landscapes, Dies

Her death, announced on the artist’s Instagram, draws renewed attention to a six-decade practice that won broader international recognition after 2025 museum shows.

Overview

  • News of Brathwaite’s passing was posted on the artist’s Instagram and has been confirmed by major art outlets and institutions that exhibited her work.
  • Born in San Fernando, Trinidad in 1938, she trained in London and Paris before settling in Caracas in 1969, where she became a central figure in Venezuela’s art scene.
  • Her sculpture used sinuous, biomorphic forms to blur bodies and landscapes while shifting materials across decades, including ceramics, fabric, plaster, concrete, and MDF.
  • Brathwaite won prizes in Venezuela in the 1970s but received much wider international attention after a 2025 MALBA survey and inclusion in the Mercosul Biennial.
  • Institutions that showed her work have publicly acknowledged her death, reports note a slight uncertainty about whether she was 87 or 88, and a memorial was held in Caracas.