Juan Astorga Junquera

Juan Astorga (born Juan Manuel Astorga Junquera) was a Venezuelan academic, architect, art critic, curator, editor, avant-garde artist, and film scriptwriter.

He was passionate about information technologies and the Internet and their use in the process of art creation and preservation.

His main areas of interest included Cybernetic art and Web Curatorship.

His parents were Juan Astorga Anta and Maruja Junquera de Astorga originally from Spain, who had emigrated to Ecuador in the early-1950s.

Juan Astorga Junquera was born on August 13, 1954, in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

He grew up in a family linked to art and university education in the Venezuelan city of Mérida.

In 1958 they moved to Mérida where they lived for the rest of their lives.

Juan Astorga Anta was a professor of art history at the School of Humanities of the University of the Andes and the first director of Mérida's Museum of Modern Art, inaugurated in October 1969.

In 1972, Juan Astorga Junquera received his degree in architecture from the University of the Andes, where he was a full professor from 1978 until his retirement in 2013.

With the election of José Mendoza Angulo as Rector of the University of the Andes in 1980, Astorga was appointed Executive Secretary of the Rectorate.

In that capacity he created and directed the "Revista Azul”, a monthly political and cultural magazine, as well as a collection of books called "Los libros de Azul". The team assembled by Astorga for the magazine included, among other intellectuals, artists, journalists and photographers, Mauro Bello, Roberto Giusti, Julio Miranda, Miguel Montoya and Edgar C. Otálvora.

In 1984, he participated as actor and scriptwriter in the short film "Borderline", a multimedia project directed by Leonardo Henríquez.

In addition, between 1985 and 1988 he made with his brother Luis Astorga Junquera the art videos "Versus", "¿y-a-til de la saveur dans le blanc d'un oef?" and "III".

During this period he developed conceptual art projects that formed part of group exhibitions at the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art Sofía Imber and the National Art Gallery in Caracas.

In 1989 he created, with the support of the Department of Art History of the University of the Andes, the repository of information on Latin American art "VEREDA, Venezuela Red de Arte".

He also co-authored the screenplay for the 1992 film "Karibe con tempo" directed by Diego Rísquez - a tribute to the painter Armando Reverón.

He was also visiting professor at the Central University of Venezuela in 1996.

At these universities he taught courses in Curatorship, Conservation and Heritage Preservation, Art Theory and Criticism, Aesthetics, “Architecture and Film”, History of architecture and Architectural theory.

His involvement in filmmaking included his work as screenwriter and art director of the 1996 feature film "Tokyo-Paraguaipoa" directed by Leonardo Henríquez.

From 1997 Juan Astorga concentrated his activities on the preservation on the Internet of the images and the history of Venezuelan art.

In that year he began the design and implementation of VEREDA, a wiki portal specialized in art.

VEREDA was conceived as a documentation center, a university publishing house, an exhibition space, and an experimental laboratory for processes of technological appropriation.

In its multiple operations VEREDA supported the creation of the institutional repository of the University of the Andes.

In 2003 he was a member of the jury that selected the Venezuelan representation at the Venice Biennale.

In 2011 he was in charge of coordinating and developing the Internet portal of the National Art Gallery, which he designed as a wikihistory portal of art in Venezuela.

Astorga Junquera, who suffered from Crohn's disease since 1991, died in Mérida on November 24, 2020, due to COVID-19 infection.