Vera Chaves Barcellos

Last updated
Vera Chaves Barcellos
Born1938
Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Education
Known forArtist, Educator
Notable workEnigmas (1996/2015), Epidermic Shapes (1977/1982)
Website www.verachaves.com

Vera Chaves Barcellos (born 1938) is a Brazilian artist and educator. She was featured in the Radical Women show at the Brooklyn Museum in 2018. [1]

Contents

In her work Barcellos explores the theme of the human body as landscape to engage with the natural environment and makes a symbiotic relations with landscape. Like Delfina Bernal, Silvia Gruner and Lygia Pape, [2] such connections between the land and the body is as revealing conceptual and aesthetic actions of a representative, cultural, and ritual nature. [3]

Early life and education

Barcellos was born in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in 1938. She graduated in 1956 from Instituto de Belas-Artes de Porto Alegre, having studied music. However, she gave up her plans to be a musician and instead, she decided to pursue the visual/fine arts. Between 1961 and 1962, Barcellos studied printmaking, painting at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and Saint Martin's School of Art in London, at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. Also, she studied lithography and linocut at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, Netherlands. [4] After these studies, she dedicated herself to printmaking.

Career

During the 1970s, Barcellos taught printmaking at Universidade Feevale, in Novo Hamburgo and began to incorporate photography in her work. After receiving a scholarship in 1975, she undertook further studies on photography at the Croydon College of Art and Technology in London. After this experience, photography became the central medium for the artist. Also, reproduction became important to her questioning of the nature of images. Her series Testarte was presented at the 1976 Venice Biennale and at the 1977 São Paulo Art Biennial. From 1970 to 1977, Barcellos taught engraving and painting at the Federação de Ensino Superior de Novo Hamburgo. [5]

Since the 1980s Barcellos's production has included multimedia installations, manipulated photography, computerized images, objects, videos, and animation. Her work has been included in group exhibitions in Latin America, Europe, South Korea, Japan, the United States, and Australia. She has also had solo exhibitions in Brazil and abroad.

In 2004, Barcellos became a Spanish citizen. [6] Three years later, Barcellos received the Prêmio Joaquim Felizardo. [7] With the artists Carlos Pasquetti and Patricio Farias, she launched the Obra Aberta Gallery, which operated from 1999 to 2002. In 2003, she established the Vera Chaves Barcellos Foundation which owns more than 1,500 works by Brazilian and other artists in Porto Alegre, dedicated to the preservation and promotion of contemporary art. In 2007, the Centro Cultural Santander in Porto Alege presented a retrospective of her work. [5]

In 2015 she participated in the international collective exhibition "A Mão Negativa," with curator Bernardo de Souza, in Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro.

Artworks

Installation

Epidermic Scapes, 1977/1982

This work consists of thirty printed images on translucent paper (1977) enlarged and printed in an analogic process on photographic paper. It is a black and white image of close-ups of skin which does not read as skin, but as landscapes. From an interview, Barcellos revealed the ideas behind the work saying that "from the beginning I had this idea of enlarging them. All the textures of any body is different and we have in our body infinity of landscapes." [8] The work is intended to show a problem of documentation, to suggest terrestrial landscapes, and revoke a questioning of limits of what is and is not. Art critic and curator Icleia Borsa Cattani says that "These were a question of a selection of elements which allowed an ambiguous reading: that which is intrinsically ours (our body) viewed as something exterior to us (a landscape)." [9]

“Enigmas”, 1996 (Enigmas)

Barcellos made this work at Galeria Artual in Barcelona, in 1996. It shows a cultural evolution of man, the origin of matter, of life, the beginnings of language. [10] Also, she refers the continuity regarding the procedures from previous works, which means that a photographic image comprised its origin as “totally circumstantial”. In Enigmas, photographs of great primates from the Barcelona Zoo are located in the middle, and it is shown as manipulated, enlarged, photocopied object and form the three main images in the exhibition. [11] A grotesque and ironic appearance of the primate bride brings into the question: does the marriage animal-culture succeed? [12]

Cegueses, 1997 (Blindness: the Tiresias’ way or reflexions on blindness)

This is the only installation in which Barcellos didn't use images but only texts because it was for an “in situ” installation for a collective show held in the Museu d’Art de Girona, in the north of Catalunya. It described the main works of five Brazilian artists, Lygia Clark, Helio Oiticica, Cildo Meireles, Antonio Dias and Waltercio Caldas: All had worked with different non-visual matters in the '60s and '70s. [12] It suggests multiple interpretations and metaphors about blindness, presented through the visual arts, literature, and a lectures cycle. The work exhibited by Vera Chaves had as its title "O Caminho de Tirésias ou Reflexões sobre a Cegueira: um Ensaio sobre Cinco Artistas Brasileiros." [13]

"Per Gli Ucelli", 2010

Barcellos said about this work, "I think the installation for Octógono, in a certain way, is divided into three parts: Two of them are in the platform, where we have two aspects – the ancient craftsmanship of manipulating glasses, and the postmodern technology of light circuits mechatronic commands. And hovering over this, the “natural” sound of birds. Although a manipulation was elaborated using overlapping tracks with different birds singing, nature is still the origin of the sounds." [14] She intended to show a dialogue between the created object and nature throughout this work, reflecting her view since she was young that the world was divided in two different elements, nature and the built.

Memorial Series

This is an installation about memory and the female universe. An original photo of flowers and hundreds names of women are used in it. [15] Also, it consisted of many materials such as marble, paper, and objects which are manipulated. It presents the idea of femininity, time, memory, and life and death. [11]

This installment states the decadence of classical culture in postmodern times. Many materials are used, for example, fragmented photocopies of photographs of ornaments, bits of marble plates, a large white cotton cloth which covers the entire surface of the room. A plate of glass covers the entrance door so that people can see but they cannot enter into the space. The only lighting comes from 15-watt bulbs placed under the cloth in front of each plate. It is a funeral chamber to classical culture. [16] It develops the cultural memory by employing manipulated photography using paper and marble. [11]

This work was built for a memorial to the destruction of Brazilian forests. Engraved marmol plates with the names of 420 trees collected from a Brazilian dictionary, most of them of indigenous origin, were placed side to side in both lateral walls of the installation's central room. At the entrance, in a dark chamber, there are back-light boxes with photoliths by the artist from the 70s. However, now it shows images of forests, trees and cut woods. The last room presents a DVD projection, which shows similar images superposed with images of a flame in permanent movement. [17]

Video

A definição da arte (1996)

This is a short video made by Barcellos. She uses humor and irony to make a satire of the intellectualized discussion that accompanies contemporary art production. What could mean despise for academic rhetoric is, above all, a high-spirited commentary on a situation as frequent as it is human – all too human, it is worth noting. [18]

Recent work

One of the recent work is Enigmas (2015) Centro Municipal de Arte, Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. [19] According to Barcellos, this exhibition could also be classified as an installation which is made of images, fossils, skin pieces and salt boxes. There is a documentary about this exhibition " Enigmas "Documentário sobre "Enigmas", de Vera Chaves Barcellos by Vera Chaves Barcellos, and it was shown from March 7 to May 23, 2015 in Centro Municipal de Arte Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.

Organization and influence

Chaves Barcellos has been dedicated to the dissemination of Contemporary Art, participating in the organization of several exhibitions and publications. [20] she was one of the founders of Nervo Óptico, a group of artists active in Porto Alegre between 1976 and 1978. She managed the influential exhibition space Espaço N.O with eight female artists, and promoted alternative formats, such as mail art, performance, dance-theater, and installation. Since the 1980s she has been carrying out multimedia installations, manipulated photography, computerized images, objects, videos, and animation. She administered Galeria Obra Aberta in Porto Alegre from 1999 to 2002, and opened the foundation that bears her name in 2003. Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos currently owns more than 1500 works by Brazilian and other artists, for example, Mira Schendel (1919–1988), Lygia Clark (1920–1988), León Ferrari (1920–2013), Sol LeWitt (1928–2007), Christo (born 1935), Regina Silveira (born 1939), and Paulo Bruscky (born 1949). [6]

Recent exhibitions [21]

Individual Exhibitions

2010

2011

2012

2013

2015

2017

Collective Exhibitions

2015

2016

2017

2018

Collections

Chaves Barcellos's pieces are in the collections of the Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo and Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro. [6]

Collection of Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo [22]

Honors and awards

Publications

Personal life

She currently lives and works in Barcelona and Viamão. [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfons Hug</span>

Alfons Hug is a curator, critic and exhibition organizer.

Brígida Baltar was a Brazilian visual artist. Her work spanned across a wide range of mediums, including video, performance, installation, drawing, and sculpture. She was interested in capturing the ephemeral in her artwork.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carybé</span> Argentine-Brazilian artist and historian (1911–1997)

Héctor Julio Páride Bernabó was an Argentine-Brazilian artist, researcher, writer, historian and journalist. His nickname and artistic name, Carybé, a type of piranha, comes from his time in the scouts. He died of heart failure after the meeting of a candomblé community's lay board of directors, the Cruz Santa Opô Afonjá Society, of which he was a member.

Albuquerque Mendes is a Portuguese artist. He works in the fields of painting, performance art and installation.

Roberto Cabot is a Brazilian visual artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gretta Sarfaty</span>

Gretta Sarfaty, born Alegre Sarfaty, is also known as Gretta Grzywacz and Greta Sarfaty Marchant, also simply as Gretta. is a painter, photographer and multimedia artist who earned international acclaim in the 1970s, from her artistic works related to Body art and Feminism. Born in Greece, in 1947, she moved with her family to São Paulo in 1954, being naturalized as Brazilian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claudio Edinger</span> Brazilian photographer

Claudio Edinger is a Brazilian photographer born in Rio de Janeiro in 1952. He lived in New York from 1976 to 1996.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francisco Tropa</span> Portuguese artist (sculptor)

Francisco Tropa is a Portuguese sculptor and visual artist. He lives and works in Lisbon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iole de Freitas</span> Brazilian sculptor, engraver and installation artist

Iole Antunes de Freitas is a Brazilian sculptor, engraver, and installation artist who works in the field of contemporary art. Freitas began her career in the 1970s, participating in a group of artists in Milan, Italy linked to Body art. She used photography. In the 1980s, she returned to Brazil, but abandoned the human body as mediator of her work, adopting the "sculpture body". The artist uses materials such as wire, canvas, steel, copper, stone, and water to create her works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sheila Leirner</span>

Sheila Leirner is a French Brazilian curator, journalist, and art critic, as well as a writer. She was chief curator of the XVIII and XIX São Paulo Art Biennials.

Guilherme Dable is a Brazilian artist who lives and works in Porto Alegre. He had his MFA from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul Art Institute in 2012, having graduated there in drawing in 2009. Guilherme Dable’s films The Tamer and The radio was always on in the kitchen are part of Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro’s permanent collection, 2016. Guilherme also has paintings in the above-mentioned collection on permanent loan from Gilberto Chateaubriand.

Maria Lynch is a Brazilian artist.

Gisele Camargo was born on July 11, 1970, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is a Brazilian painter and photographer who works in photography, video, and painting. She is best known for her pictorial meditations on urban and cinematic landscapes. She was formally trained at the Escola de Belas-Artes (EBA) of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in the late 1990s. While in the institution, Camargo was part of a group of students who concentrated on issues of urban experience and visual culture in Rio de Janeiro. Camargo was different from the rest of her classmates, while they engaged mostly with multimedia language she remained a painter, with sporadic forays into photography and photocollage.

Dudi Maia Rosa is a Brazilian artist.

Waldemar Cordeiro was an Italian-born Brazilian art critic and artist. He worked as a computer artist in the early days of computer art and was a pioneer of the concrete art movement in Latin America.

Hércules Rubens Barsotti was a Brazilian painter, graphic designer, scenographer and costume designer. He was a member of the Neo-Concrete Movement.

Judith Lauand was a Brazilian painter and printmaker. She is considered a pioneer of the Brazilian modernist movement that started in the 1950s, and was the only female member of the concrete art movement based in São Paulo, the Grupo Ruptura.

Juliana Scotá Stein is a visual artist and photographer. She graduated in Psychology from Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR) in 1992 and lived in Florence and Venice where she studied art. She continued to work with photography during the 1990s, developing her craft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wanda Pimentel</span> Brazilian artist (1943–2019)

Wanda Pimentel was a Brazilian painter, based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her work is distinguished by "a precise, hard-edge quality encompassing geometric lines and smooth surfaces in pieces that often defy categorization as abstract or figurative. “My studio is in my bedroom,” Pimentel said in an interview. “Everything has to be very neat. .. I work alone. I think my issues are the issues of our time: the lack of perspective for people, their alienation. The saddest thing is for people to be dominated by things.”

Mara Alvares is a Brazilian artist. She mainly specialized in photography as one of her notable works is the Adansônia. She first studied metal engraving with the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul with Iberê Camargo.

References

  1. ↑ "The Brooklyn Museum Presents the Critically Acclaimed Exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985" (PDF). Brooklyn Museum . December 2017. Archived from the original on 15 July 2021.
  2. ↑ Fajardo-Hill, Cecilia; Guerrero, Marcela (2017). "Latina Art Through the Exhibition Lens: Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985". Diálogo. 20 (1): 133–140. doi:10.1353/dlg.2017.0015. ISSN   2471-1039. S2CID   149187408.
  3. ↑ "Body Landscape / El cuerpo en paisaje | Radical Women digital archive". Hammer Museum. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  4. 1 2 Radical women : Latin American art, 1960–1985. Fajardo-Hill, Cecilia,, Giunta, Andrea,, Alonso, Rodrigo,, Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center,, Brooklyn Museum,, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA (Project). Los Angeles. 2017. ISBN   9783791356808. OCLC   982089637.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  5. 1 2 "Vera Chaves Barcellos" (in Portuguese).
  6. 1 2 3 "Vera Chaves Barcellos | Radical Women digital archive". Hammer Museum. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  7. 1 2 "Vera Chaves Barcellos". Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos (in Portuguese).
  8. ↑ Hammer Museum (2017-12-01), Radical Women: Vera Chaves Barcellos , retrieved 2019-03-10
  9. ↑ "DIVERSIONS AND/OR THE ORIGINALITY OF COPIES". www.verachaves.com. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  10. ↑ "Images in Migration, Vera Chaves Barcellos interviewed by Gloria Ferreira". www.verachaves.com. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  11. 1 2 3 "Uma obra contemporânea de seu tempo". www.verachaves.com. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  12. 1 2 "Installations". www.verachaves.com. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  13. ↑ "A Work of Art Contemporaneous of Its Time". www.verachaves.com. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  14. ↑ "La opción de un artista por determinado medio o procedimiento se constituye en la materialización de un proceso mental y crea". www.verachaves.com. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  15. ↑ "Installations-Memorial III". www.verachaves.com. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  16. ↑ "Installations-IV". www.verachaves.com. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  17. ↑ "Installations-V". www.verachaves.com. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  18. ↑ "Vera Chaves Barcellos – 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil". 19º Festival de Arte Contemporânea Sesc_Videobrasil. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  19. ↑ "Recent works". www.verachaves.com. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
  20. 1 2 "Biography". www.verachaves.com. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  21. ↑ "FVCB » Currículo" (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  22. ↑ "Vera Chaves Barcellos Resultados da pesquisa". MAM (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  23. ↑ "ICAA Documents > THE ARCHIVE > Full Record". icaadocs.mfah.org. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  24. ↑ "FVCB » Vera Chaves Barcellos: A Respeito do Sorriso" (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 2019-03-11.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.