03.21.2009
Collection
Almost a year after opening the acclaimed headquarters designed by Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza, in Porto Alegre, the Iberê Camargo Foundation is celebrating with an exposition of the first show designed by an international curator. The exhibition, spread over three of the building's floors, is the largest produced so far and includes works that are part of the collection of some four thousand titles. Art critic María José Herrera, head of the research and curatorship department of the National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA), in Buenos Aires, and president of the Argentinean Art Critics Association, put together 37 paintings and 62 drawings and studies of the painter to compose the exhibition Iberê Camargo - Um Ensaio Visual (A Visual Essay), open to the public from March 22 to August 30. The show is being sponsored by Gerdau, Itaú, Camargo Corrêa, Vonpar and De Lage Landen.
Maria José invites spectators to explore pieces that reflect the painter’s view of nature, man and shapes, during his 50 years producing art, from 1940 to 1994. “The exhibition proposes a visual interpretation that traces the history of art, the voice of the artist and those of his critics. His persistence reveals him as a creator who is aware his personal choices. At the peak of the arrival of concretism in the 1950s, Iberê changed the direction of his language away from abstract rationalism, relying on a subjective language, with a heavy existential tone. Man’s situation in the world was a constant point of concern for him and was manifested in diverse manners in his paintings, engravings and drawings", she says.
The path suggested in Um Ensaio Visual begins on the fourth floor with the canvas Solidão (Solitude), the last piece painted by Iberê before his death, in 1994, followed by a selection of photographs labeled with texts written in Iberê’s own handwriting, documenting the esthetic experience of the painter and important moments of his artistic life. In 1980, while painting the Ciclistas (Cyclists) series, Iberê wrote: “There is no ideal of beauty, but the ideal of true poignancy and suffering, which is my life, and your life, and our life in this journey in the world. I paint because life is painful”.
In another photo, the artist appears painting the famous Geneva panel, a 7m x 7m piece, which was given to the World Health Organization’s headquarters, inaugurated in 1966, as a gift from the Brazilian government. “The production process was a challenge for the artist who produced many sketches. After months of work, much of which was carried out on site, the final result is a colorful abstract painting appearing from a tangle of gestures and stylizations of birds, spindles, flowers and dice. In a certain way, it marked the end of a stage in his abstract art. Immediately after, the signs and shapes reappeared, which preceded the return of his use of human figures in the 1980s”, explains Maria José. In addition to the sketches Iberê took with him on his trip to Switzerland, the exhibition presents paintings and drawings, such as the works Núcleo I and II (1963), which influenced the abstract construction of the mural.
Looking at humankind: portraits through time
Within the nucleus Looking at Humankind: Portraits through Time, on the third floor, spectators are able to accompany various records the painter made of himself through a selection self-portraits and portraits of other people, a personal self-reflection and, at the same time, his way of judging human nature. From 1980 on, the self-portraits become a bitter account that extends to the vision of others, as can be noted in the series Tudo te é falso e inútil IV (Everything about you is false and useless IV) and As Idiotas (The Idiots), in which existential indifference is represented by butchered and alienated subjects. The tyranny of time and the pain of living are constant topics in Iberê’s final production.
In María José’s curatorship, a few rarities are on display to the public, such as a drawing which portrays a young bare chested Iberê, dated August 18, 1940, followed by other works in which, according to the curator, it is possible to notice the "exercise of style and the visual influence of his first teacher, Guignard, in the image's construction", citing the works Auto-Retrato (Self-Portrait) from 1943 and 1946, included in the show.
Looking at nature: the landscape
On the second floor, the last exhibition floor, spectators can see the first landscapes painted in the 1940s, such as Jaguari, Paisagem (Landscape) and Dentro do Mato (Inside the Forest) , as well as a video showing images of Iberê painting at different times of his life. “The first images of streams and landscapes like Jaguari, in Rio Grande do Sul, where he was born, are landscapes without people, but they exhibit an exultant nature in the luxuriant vitality of trees with their canopies reflected in the water. During those years, Iberê preferred natural landscapes which in some way stimulated abstraction. The mirrors of water and the galleries of vegetation allow the image to be duplicated on opposite plains and play with the non-differentiation of color", says the curator.
After a long absence, the landscape briefly reappears in paintings form the 1980s Mulher de Bicicleta (Woman on a Bycicle) , Outono no Parque da Redenção I and II (Fall in Redenção Park I and II) . This time, with a background of ghostly figures, defined by somber tones; the landscape reflects the nature of the people, their human condition.
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