BRAZIL - Part 6 In the Studio at Teresopolis

View from the studio, Teresopolis

Up in the mountains, about 85 km north of Rio, are the secluded farm, home and studios of Gonçalo Ivo -- where I was most privileged to live and work for 3 amazing weeks. It is a lush and magical environment that has been shaped over the years into a utopian engine for optimum creative production. Here are a few images:

Gonçalo (right) and his long-time assistant Jose at work in Studio #1

Gonçalo & assistants wrapping paintings for his exhibition at Galeria Anita Schwartz

Moving them out - it takes a team

My new paintings (above & below) -- drying

Finished work ready to be delivered to Galeria Murilo Castro

A few small gifts for my most gracious hosts

Gonçalo (left) works on new watercolors in Studio #2, while his father, renowned poet Ledo Ivo (right) reads some Shakespeare

Ledo, Leonardo, Antonia and Denise Ivo -- relaxing in Studio #2

Paraiso

Brazil - Part 5 More Encounters in Rio

Alvaro Seixas

Alvaro Seixas at Amarelonegro

Brazil Paiva at the National Fine Arts Museum

Alberto Guinard, Lea & Maura, 1940, 86 x 104 cm, oil on canvas - at the National Fine Arts Museum

Cristina Canale at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio

A group of small canvases by Fabio Miguez in the racks at Anita Schwartz

Rodrigo Andrade in the racks at Anita Schwartz

Manfredo de Souzanetto at Gustavo Rebello

Julio Villani

Julio Villani

Luciano Figueiredo

Luciano Figueiredo, Studio View, Rio

Luciano Figueiredo, Studio View, Rio

Brazil - Part 4

Gisele Camargo

My stay in Brazil was only three weeks, most of which was spent completing a group of new paintings to be shown at the Salao de Arte fair in Sao Paulo (August 17 - 22). But when I wasn't in the studio, I had the tremendous privilege of meeting a great many members of the Brazilian art community -- artists, dealers, collectors, curators, writers, editors, passionate art lovers. Without exception, everyone I met was open, warm, engaged and enthusiastic -- generous and patient with my abject lack of Portuguese, and astonishingly upbeat, with a wonderful sense of humor that is deeply ingrained in the culture.

Here is a small selection of work by just a few of the artists I met in Rio de Janeiro:

GISELE CAMARGO

Gisele Camargo, Tarkovski, 2010, 70 x 235 cm, 4 panels

Gisele Camargo, Tarkovski, 4th panel

Gisele Camargo is the youngest of this group, she works as a studio assistant for Beth Jobim, and shows with Mercedes Viegas Arte Contemoranea in Rio, and with Galeria Oscar Cruz in Sao Paulo. Highly prolific, she often shows groups of dozens of small paintings arranged in a tight grid that runs across the wall and around a corner. While this strategy makes for striking installations, I found myself much more drawn to the complex dynamics and poetry of each individual composition.

LUCIANO FIGUEIREDO

Luciano Figueiredo

Luciano Figueiredo

Painter, writer, curator, thinker, Luciano Figueiredo divides his time between Rio and southern France. A younger proponent of the Concrete Art impulse, Luciano's recent work involves the painstaking construction of small exquisite geometric objects, made from multiple layers of canvas -- painted, adhered in layers, then cut and folded. While I was visiting his studio, Luciano showed me an amazing catalog from the Museum of Concrete Art (l'Espace de l'Art Concret) near Nice -- comprising the world-class Sybil Albers and Gottfried Honegger collection of reductive painting and sculpture. More images from Luciano's studio to come.

LUCIA LAGUNA

Lucia Laguna

Lucia Laguna

Lucia Laguna makes thick juicy oil paintings that are built intuitively from unlikely juxtapositions of organic and industrial shapes and spaces. Her more simple compositions have the stately elegance of a Diebenkorn, while the more complex pieces evoke a messy collision of technology and entropy. Both modes are supremely sensual, with deep surfaces and luscious color. Lucia shows with Galeria Laura Marsiaj in Rio.

MANFREDO DE SOUZANETTO

Manfredo de Souzanetto

Manfredo de Souzanetto

Manfredo de Souzanetto makes sensual objects that occupy a shifting passage between pictorial and physical space. Impeccably constructed out of wood, canvas, pigment, his paintings evoke the rhythms and presence of bodies in motion, their surfaces rich with touch. Manfredo has restlessly and deeply explored the ambiguities of this territory, and the inherent poetics of many various materials, for more than 30 years. He will be presenting a major museum show in Rio this fall.

I wish to thank these artists for their time, patience and openness. I look forward to seeing you all again on my next trip. More images from Brazil to come.

GONÇALO IVO at Anita Schwartz Rio de Janeiro

Gonçalo Ivo, Installation View, (center) Campo Santo, 2009, oil & mixed media on linen 260 x 580cm

The only commercial gallery space in Rio de Janeiro that rivals the expanse and grandeur of the "art temples" of Chelsea is Galeria Anita Schwartz, where Gonçalo Ivo has just opened a magnificent exhibition titled Campo Santo (Holy Ground), through September 4. This show is a culmination of, or maybe a first glimpse at a shift in Gonçalo's work that has been developing over the past few years. The first and most obvious new development is in the scale of the paintings. In the gallery's ground floor space, a cavernous white cube that makes a 6 ft painting look like a small spot on the wall, the artist has installed three massive works, each about 8.5 x 22ft, that radically alter the space of the gallery, activating its expanse with color and surface resonances that hold the viewer's primary and peripheral vision in a constantly shifting scenario. Along with the dramatic scale of these paintings, the surface of each piece is built of many layers of oil, color over color, to create a thick amalgamated physicality. In the central "white" painting (above), the huge field is made of gravel-like grit impregnated with gooey pigment that forms pools of sludge creating gorgeous subtle color nuances. To the right (below), the artist presents an elaboration of an ongoing motif related to rivers -- long horizontal color arrays. The muted earth colors of this painting, inspired by a visit to a medieval chapel in Spain, evoke a sense of embedded history. The surface is made of thousands of small brush strokes, piled layer upon layer, embodying a long meditative process of accumulation that reveals a history of its own.

Installation View, (left) Santa maria de Taull, 2009, oil on linen 260 x 650 cm, (right) Campo Santo, 2010, 230 x 160 cm, tempera, calcination, silver leaf on wood

On the left hand wall (below) we see another tour de force painting. The deep undulating blues of its central field are created in many thick and thin layers, contrasting cobalt and black blues overpainted with a luminous ultramarine. The thick accumulation of fat oil brushstrokes recalls the late paintings of Milton Resnick, but with a distinctive chromatic assertiveness. The blues of this painting, set off by the purples and greens of the upper and lower color bands, create a physical and psychological space of their own -- pulling us into the field, engulfing our vision and our senses.

Installation View, (left) Oratorio da Noite, 2010, 260 x 650 cm, oil on linen

On the two short walls are paintings in the shape of crosses -- weathered wood objects with sensuous surfaces made of tempera with gold and silver leaf. These objects, and others in the upstairs space, create a complex and charged juxtaposition with the large paintings -- connecting assertions of the opulence and vitality of contemporary abstract painting with ancient cultural impulses and iconography. The crosses expand and clarify the context of the work, exploring painting's historic existential connection with human sensibility.

Installation View, (left & below) Untitled, 2010, 360 x 140 cm, tempera and calcination on wood

In a small alcove, is a group of watercolors (below), exquisite in their delicacy. In stark contrast to the sheer physicality of the big paintings, the watercolors reveal the genesis of Gonçalo's process, rooted in the intuitive poetics of color.

Gonçalo Ivo, Oratorios, 2010, 5 watercolors, 45 x 38 cm

Continuing up the stairs, we encounter more painted wood objects, including a transcendent Giotto-blue cross that fuses with the Brazilian sky.

Mulher Africana, 2009, 385 x 30 cm, tempera & calcination on wood

Scrovegni, 2010, 360 x 110 cm, tempera on wood

Detail of Scrovegni, 2010

Now we enter the upstairs gallery, a sort of penthouse space with a sliding glass wall leading to a terrace overlooking the granite peaks of Rio's shoreline. On the facing long walls, the artist presents two large (200 x 400 cm) powerful black paintings -- one a metallic green black, the other a deep purple black -- with thick chunky oil surfaces. Their presence is imposing and ominous, yet the subtlety of their color resonances eventually invites us up close. Placed around the concrete floor of the interior space is a group of small marble objects that each have embedded in their upper surface a cross and a stone. Outside on the wooden deck of the terrace, is a group of larger concrete slabs with embedded wooden crosses and stones. The glass doors form an interesting transparent barrier between the smooth formality of the marbles inside, and the rugged "poorness" of the concrete objects outside.

(left) Campo Santo, 2010, 54 x 34 x 12 cm, gesso, tempera, stone on marble, (right) Campo Santo, 2010, 50 x 32 x 16 cm, gesso, tempera, stone on marble

Installation View, (indoors left) Campo Santo, 2010, 50 x 50 x 16 cm, concrete, tempera, stone on marble, (indoors right) Oratorio da Lua Nova, 2010, 200 x 400 cm, oil on canvas, (outdoors left) Campo Santo, 2010, 125 x 80 x 10 cm, gesso, tempera, stone on concrete, (outdoors right) Campo Santo, 2010, 125 x 80 x 10 cm, gesso, tempera, stone on concrete

Installation View, (outdoors left) Campo Santo, 2010, 220 x 80 x 10 cm, gesso, tempera, silver leaf, stone on concrete, (indoors left to right) Oratorio para Sexta-feira, 2010, 200 x 400 cm, oil on canvas; Campo Santo, 2010, 50 x 32 x 16 cm, gesso, tempera, stone on marble; Campo Santo, 2010, 54 x 34 x 12 cm, gesso, tempera, stone on marble; Campo Santo, 2010, 54 x 30 x 10 cm, gesso, tempera, stone on marble; Oratorios, 2010, two watercolors, 45 x 38 cm each

In this upstairs space, Gonçalo has created a deeply poetic environment that is charged with emotion and layered cultural implications. It's meaning is not explicit, but its presence is unequivocal.

Gonçalo Ivo, Installation view with (right) Oratorio para Sexta-feira, 2010, oil on canvas, 200 x 400 cm

The scale and scope of this exhibition really deserves a museum setting, even though the installation is specific to this particular gallery space. The implications of the work transcend any local setting, not to mention any notions of commerce. This show is a potent testament to the ability of abstract painting to embody and evoke feeling -- to stand as proof of the potential richness of existence. Gonçalo has created more than just a group of new paintings -- he has made a momentous act of devotion, at once heroic and humble, ambiguous and true.

Gonçalo Ivo with Oratorio da Noite, 2010, 260 x 660 cm, oil on linen