The Observer and his Object Painting

Brazilian from Rio de Janeiro. Currently living in the state of Paraíba. I started studying painting and drawing at the age of eight at Brazilian Society of Fine Arts with Professor Antenor Finatti, a painter of pier and marine scenes. His paintings with strong tones, lines marking the contours and wide areas of thick paint were my first references. At the age of twelve I discovered modern painting and its movements. The Impressionists, Surrealism, and especially Cubism came to exert great influence on me at that time. Picasso, Miró, Klee, Braque became my references, specially Klee and his watercolor paintings. From 1977 to 1979 I turned back to study drawing at “Brazilian Society of Fine Arts”. The works of this period are basically drawings in China ink, some watercolor and oil paintings. In the following two years I took part in my first art exhibitions. 1985 – School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage – EAV. At the age of 25 I joined the painting course at “School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage” with Professor Charles Watson, who would become my main teacher in this period. In class we were led through a series of strategies to make us aware of our vices of painting. The first days of class were intended to teach us how to make a chassis from scratch. Not by chance, during the course of that year, I finally understood pictorial space as something that is constructed. Encouraged by the texts given in the course, by the discovery of new artists and by my teacher's own line of work, small painted sculptures made of wood and then larger sculptures came up. With the painting “Solid State”, a new figuration begins, focused on the construction of the pictorial space through the use of basic forms of drawing. This figuration began to reflect on the wooden objects, the sculptures and the overlapping planes of the assemblages. Artists such as Frank Stela, Kurt Schwitters, Philip Guston have become important references contributing to the conception of this idea of a constructed space that goes beyond the canvas surface. There were six years of “Parque Lage” studies, several collective exhibitions and three individual exhibitions. The production of this time transited between acrylic on canvas, Styrofoam sculptures, wood sculptures and assemblages. In 1992 I had my last solo exhibition in the Small Gallery of “Candido Mendes Cultural Center” at Praça XV - Rio de Janeiro, called "Retrospective 1984 - 1993".