Focus on this artwork and explain the Background.
The Venezuelan architect and designer Carlos Raúl Villanueva began designing the Central University of Venezuela (UCV)'s University City of Caracas campus in the 1940s, beginning construction in the 1950s during a time of prevailing modernism in Latin America. Villanueva had a stylistic ideology for the project he called the "Synthesis of the Arts", combining the arts and architecture and creating artistic pieces that could also serve functional purposes. Villanueva died in 1975, before Pedro León Zapata began work on Conductores de Venezuela. Zapata was a cartoonist, working for newspaper El Nacional for 50 years, and had also been trained as a painter and muralist. His artwork was characteristically critical of the government, and he often depicted the everyday reality of life for regular Venezuelans. In 2005, he was awarded a PhD by UCV, where he was also a professor.
Pedro León Zapata Caracas modernism Carlos Raúl Villanueva University City of Caracas El Nacional Central University of Venezuela