How Ricardo Gonzalez Ramos Is Championing Latin American Art Through Legacy

For almost a decade, Galería RGR has served as a vital bridge between Venezuela’s rich postwar artistic movements and broader Latin American creativity while situating these practices within an international discourse of shared aesthetic sensibilities. At the helm of the gallery is young, dynamic art dealer Ricardo Gonzalez Ramos, who established it in 2018. In many ways, he represents a new generation of dealers who are empathetic, globally minded and rewriting parts of the traditional market playbook.

Gonzalez Ramos’s foundation in the art world is rooted in both Venezuela and Mexico. He was born in the latter, where his paternal family is from, and although he grew up in Venezuela, he traveled frequently to Mexico throughout his childhood and youth. “It was never a distant country for me. It was part of my personal landscape long before it became the place where I would establish the gallery,” Ramos Gonzalez tells Observer of his multicultural upbringing.

In Venezuela, he encountered a culture deeply shaped by modernism, especially abstraction and kinetic art. “That environment influenced my understanding of artistic rigor and the structural role artists can play within a broader historical narrative,” he explains. At the same time, witnessing the fragility of cultural infrastructure during difficult periods led him to realize that visibility and legacy cannot be taken for granted and “must be built carefully and sustained over time.” Galería RGR was born from this desire to foster visibility and preserve the legacy of these pioneering artistic languages while creating opportunities for international exchange and exposure.

“RGR wasn’t conceived as a relocation of one national narrative into another context, but as a platform capable of expanding conversations beyond borders,” Ramos Gonzalez says. What first drew him to art was curiosity, but he soon became interested in how art allows us to question perception, history, politics and philosophy simultaneously. “That complexity, and the discipline it requires, is what made me commit to it as a life. There is something very powerful in art that operates through structure, through subtle decisions about form, color and space. That kind of intelligence appealed to me early on.”

The decision to fully commit to the art world, however, came gradually. “I understood that working in art meant building something that requires patience,” he adds. “A gallery is not only about presenting exhibitions. It’s about creating continuity for artists, supporting their development and thinking long term. That responsibility makes the work meaningful.”

Since opening in CDMX in a minimalist concrete building in San Miguel Chapultepec, close to Labor and Kurimanzutto, RGR has quickly become a key presence in the city’s rapidly evolving art ecosystem. “Since opening the gallery in 2018, and especially since my first participation in ZONAMACO in 2024, I have witnessed a remarkable evolution,” he says. “The city has grown from being a strong regional capital into a site where international conversations are actively generated.”

Today the gallery’s program spans museum-quality presentations of historical masters—such as the current major show dedicated to Chilean Surrealist artist Roberto Matta, which opened during Mexico City Art Week, and the presentation of the rare-to-market Jesús-Rafael Soto’s Penetrable at Art Basel Meridians in December—alongside contemporary voices, both local and international, such as Jeppe Heine, Felipe Pantone and Elias Crespin.

“From the outset, I was committed to presenting historical masters with the scale and seriousness they require. Exhibitions of renowned international figures and legacies demand institutional weight and sustained engagement. Their relevance today depends on that depth,” Ramos Gonzalez emphasizes. Working with artists of such stature requires a profound level of commitment. “It’s not only a privilege, but a responsibility. Each presentation must meet the highest standards, both intellectually and curatorially. When you’re entrusted with legacies of that scale, the way you frame the work, contextualize it and position it internationally matters deeply.”

He may be one of the few dealers of his generation not concentrating exclusively on younger emerging voices or limiting his focus to the primary market, yet even as the program has been constructed around these historical figures, there’s a deliberate emphasis on intergenerational dialogue and structural continuity. “The presence of historical masters is not separate from the contemporary program. It forms the backbone of it,” he emphasizes.

He says his gallery’s proposition has always been structured around continuity rather than contrast. “We present historical masters alongside contemporary practices because I’m interested in how certain artistic questions remain active across time. Issues of abstraction, perception, structure and space do not belong to a single generation.”

“Just as we evolve through experience, the gallery evolves through the artists and legacies we work with. Each collaboration, each institutional dialogue, and each exchange with curators and collectors refines the direction,” Ramos Gonzalez says, describing the program as fluid and shaped by attention and experience. Every new collaboration requires careful consideration. Incorporating an artist into the program is never a casual decision. It involves evaluating how a practice fits into ongoing dialogues, how the works will be presented and what kind of conversations they can generate. “The responsibility lies not only in preserving history but in ensuring that new additions strengthen and expand the intellectual coherence of the program.”

He believes clarity and coherence matter more than speed, noting that if his generation is changing anything, it is the idea that a gallery can be both strategic and deeply intellectually engaged. “For me, it’s not about rewriting the rules,” he says. “It’s about working in a way that feels consistent, responsible and sustainable.”

Looking ahead, he hopes to expand these dialogues. “Color y línea en movimiento” paired pioneering voices of postwar South American abstraction and kinetic art, such as Gego, Soto and Cruz-Diez, with parallel research pursued by European artists associated with Gruppo Zero, including Enrico Castellani and Günther Uecker, as well as contemporary voices such as Jeppe Hein, Julio Le Parc and Elias Crespin.

RGR’s programming has also expanded significantly into Asia, including staging the first-ever show in South America by acclaimed Chinese artist Ding Yi, whom the gallery now represents. Ramos Gonzalez does not see this as a market shift but as a natural evolution of abstraction as a transcontinental language. “These histories have always intersected, even if they were not framed together. The next phase is to deepen those intersections and make the conversations more genuinely global,” he explains. In a moment when Latin American narratives are being reconsidered globally, he feels the main goal cannot be merely visibility. “It’s about depth, rigor and durability. The long-term strategy is to build presentations and dialogues that endure beyond immediate cycles and contribute meaningfully to broader art historical conversations.”

When asked whether he would consider opening a gallery in Venezuela once conditions improve, Ramos Gonzalez says that his relationship with the country is both emotional and cultural but also grounded in realism. “Venezuela shaped my early education and continues to inform my thinking. Mexico, however, has always been part of my life story,” he explains. “If circumstances in Venezuela were to improve significantly, I would consider engaging again in meaningful ways. Any involvement would need to be sustainable and structurally sound. I believe in contributing to ecosystems that can endure.”

He’s also invested in creativity beyond visual art, specifically in design, music and other cultural fields. “I’m just a genuine aesthete who believes in the power of beauty,” he says, before describing himself further as someone who values structure as much as intuition. “The art world often rewards speed and constant visibility, but over time, I’ve become more interested in building things that endure rather than reacting to what is immediate. At the same time, I remain a curious and restless person. I’m always thinking about what comes next, what else can be built, and which new conversations can be opened. I have many ideas, but with experience, I’ve learned that having ideas is not enough.”

Over time, Gonzalez Ramos has also come to value the importance of surrounding himself with people who strengthen the project and think in similar directions, though not identically. “I value healthy debate, intellectual friction and conversations that challenge my assumptions. Sharing ideas with others who can help shape them and push them further has become essential. Growth does not happen in isolation,” he says. Even his interests outside the gallery—whether in design, music or architecture—are not separate from his work. “They refine how I think about proportion, rhythm, tension and silence. All creative disciplines ultimately deal with how we structure experience. I am drawn to that shared logic,” he adds. “I believe beauty is not decorative, but structural. It has the capacity to reorganize perception. That belief continues to guide how I work and how I move forward.”

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