Burle Marx and Santídio Pereira Exhibition
Bortolami
[Image: Santídio Pereira "Untitled" (2019) Woodcut print on Japanese Kozo paper, 53 x 39 2/5 in.]
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Bortolami presents a two-person exhibition with works by Roberto Burle Marx and Santídio Pereira, organized by Ricardo Kugelmas, founder of auroras, São Paulo, in The Upstairs. Though the two Brazilian artists are from different generations, they find commonality creating work that celebrates the richness and complexity of Brazil’s natural environment, both organizing and articulating new ways of appreciating the wonder of their surroundings.
Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994), a renowned landscape architect and passionate conservationist, was a pivotal figure in Brazilian modernism. In addition to his contributions as a landscape architect, his wide-ranging output included textile design and painting, as well as sculpture, theatrical set and jewelry design. Santídio Pereira (1996) primarily focuses on printmaking. For his woodcuts, he utilizes a distinctive technique in which he favors cutting and joining wood shapes rather than chiseling and carving into a single block of wood. This process results in unique works, subverting the logic of print reproduction.
Using different approaches, both artists showcase their unique languages in translating tropical flora into form. Burle Marx studied painting in Germany in the 1920s, later earning large-scale mural commissions all over Brazil. These painted tile murals, replete with organic forms mixed with architectural geometry, served as a basis for his large tapestries. Two of Burle Marx’s rare weavings—he produced just thirty in his lifetime—hang in conversation with Pereira’s woodcut prints.
In Pereira’s woodcuts, nature appears not only in the organic forms that the artist carves by hand, but also in the veins of the wood that serves as the basis for his engravings. The artist finds inspiration in the Brazilian biomes, spending hours in the foliage making drawings of abstracted bromeliads, rolling hillsides, and tropical birds. Likewise, Burle Marx searched the same jungles for native plants to incorporate into his landscape projects, discovering over forty species that now bear his name.
Media
Schedule
from September 10, 2021 to October 16, 2021