Gravura Brasileira

 CONTEMPORARY BRAZILIAN PRINTMAKERS

The exhibit “Contemporary Brazilian Engravers” curated by Eduardo Besen, director of Gravura Brasileira gallery, draws a broad view of the print art being made in Brazil today, through the works of 31 artists:
Ana Elisa Dias Baptista, Andrea Tavares, Armando Sobral, Arnaldo Battaglini, Augusto Sampaio, Claudio Caropreso, Claudio Mubarac, Dio Viana, Elisa Bracher, Ernesto Bonato, Evandro Carlos Jardim, Fabricio Lopez, Fernando Vilela, Francisco Maringelli, Giorgia Volpe, Helena Freddi, Jacqueline Aronis, Laerte Ramos, Larissa Franco, Marcio Pannunzio, Marco Buti, Margot Delgado, Maria do Carmo Carvalho, Maria Villares, Paulo Penna, Paulo Carapunarlo, Renata Basile da Silva, Sheila Goloborotko, Simone Rebelo, Ulysses Boscolo and Walter Wagner.

The exhibition´s already been shown at:
October 2007 – Pratt Institute and Goloborotko´s Studio, New York.
March 2008- Hillyer´s Art Space, Washington DC.
and in July 2008 will be at the Fundacion Sebastian in Mexico City.

Grabadores Brasileños Contemporâneos

IAGO- Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca
Macedonio Alacalá No. 507, Centro Histórico, Oaxaca, México 
La Curtiduria
5 de mayo, 307, Jalatlaco, Oaxaca
opening: Friday, June 6th , 5-8pm.
Exhibition June 07 – July 01.

“El Grabado Brasileño”- Brazilian Printmaking
Lecture by Sheila Goloborotko, Diô Viana and Eduardo Besen-curator.
IAGO- Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca
rua Macedonio Alacalá No. 507, Centro Histórico 
Friday, June 6th 2-4pm.

                       
Organization:
GRAVURA BRASILEIRA
rua Dr. Franco da Rocha, 61
CEP 05015-040, Sao Paulo, SP, Brasil
tel.00.55.11.3624.0301 e 3624.9193
www.cantogravura.com.br 


Contemporary Brazilian Printmakers

    A collection of thirty-one printmakers gives a powerful panorama of Brazilian art today. Through this consistent exhibition, one realizes that there is an ample diversity of aesthetics and techniques  - traditional, experimental and mixed-, and that dimensions and shapes can vary greatly. This exhibition is conceived for traveling, it can stretch or reduce its span with more pieces or fewer ones, always with great strong art pieces to be shown at each venue.

    Brazilian printmakers have an interesting tradition that still requires historical attention. In the last century, there were also post office stamps created by some of the best artist printmakers. It has been a steady development of the print world in the traditional and in the innovative approaches.

    The Gravura Brasileira Gallery (Brazilian Prints Gallery) was founded ten years ago by Alberto Fuks and Eduardo Besen. Created to be devoted exclusively to this media, it has been able to achieve its goal organizing exchanges and exhibitions, institutional and commercial ones. Its mission has expanded as a contact center for printers all over the world. It is a reference for researchers and students. The Gallery has also served as a center for curators working with established and emerging artists. It is the right spot to network, to find artists` books, presentations of publications, and all other matters related to Latin American print production. Through the years, Gravura Brasileira Gallery has built a huge collection of over three thousand prints. Above all, there is a clear way of working: quality is what prevails, which can be perceived in this exhibition well.

    Ana Elisa Dias Baptista deals with the world of real and altered insects and animals and their fragments -wings, skulls, ultra-wings--, in a polyptych on death. Andrea Tavares works blue dream worlds with human figures framed by designs that recall ceramic tiles. Armando Sobral creates organic postmodern images through dry point technique excellence. Arnaldo Battaglini creates ladder images in a free drawing in dry point, on a contrasted and tall paper. Augusto Sampaio extends the woodcut richness of the plate into a geometrical spelling rhythm of horizontal lines in predominantly vertical pieces. Claudio Caropreso relates wood, as surface, to his socially descriptive prints of recycling materials and art history images -Andy Warhol`s Brillo box, typography use, and Marcel Duchamp`s urinary. Claudio Mubarac works frequently in an interrelation of photo etching and etching, integrating pure line, shadows and volume for organic forms plus geometric elements. Abstraction is present in dry point by Dio Viana, where a pictorial graphism extends to 39 x 98 cm / 15 x 39" in way of a diptych of opposite movements.

   Elisa Bracher`s contrasted image provokes the idea of an extended and plied paper, and also of a painted surface with a drawing floating on it. Ernesto Bonato turns his woodcut (xylography) into a sacred expression of hands praying. The drawn skin texture and hands create a tense contrast against the wood grain. Evandro Carlos Jardim, a Brazilian master in the printing field, always shows delicate but strong compositions. His themes range from nature to urban, and from objects to the political concept of a human being. Fabricio Lopez integrates the strong typography elements with drawing, color and landscape. Working woodcut and typography, one recalls the early times of printing with wooden block letters… Fernando Vilela organizes inclined wooden planks standing one against the other in an undetermined space. With those and woodcut technique, the artists recalls the material –wood- as belonging to the imperative contributions of that great lung –the Amazon Forest. The use of wood is understood when reforestation is undertaken for keeping life’s equilibrium. Francisco Maringelli works as an expressionist, and woodcut is a sensitive technique that adapts to such an endeavor. Helena Freddi hides and discovers dark elements out of a dark area, working with photoengraving and etching. 

   The etching by Jacqueline Aronis is fine and elegant work that visits the remembrance of landscape through gray colors. Laerte Ramos created wooden blocks with serigraphy (silkscreen) on top. His piece invites to touch, to play, and recalls that the artist has to expand, research and play to come up with new procedures and new artwork. People used to accuse silkscreen of being a flat technique; Laerte, through his cubes, demonstrates that one should not generalize. Larissa Franco develops an elaborated etching that recalls the Arabic designs, or laces. Marcio Pannunzio works figuratively; his expressionist prints treated fully in woodcut, present some sense of humor and horror vacuis. The print by Marco Buti has rich opposite colors that interact with areas in active diagonal compositions. Through photo etching, Margot Delgado approaches the concept of repetition and rhythm, creating saturated and translucent areas. Maria do Carmo Carvalho is one of the artists in the exhibition creating abstract artwork. Her metal print of sections that cross through the plate expands the limitation of size.

The intaglio graphysms created by Maria Villares offer an intense and abstract role combining three strong rows on top of a delicate grid. Artists that deal with social issues always prefer the woodcut technique. Paulo Penna also refers to suffered women although as a synthesized sculpture. Confrontation, fight, weaker and stronger silhouettes appear in the lithography artwork by Paulo Carapunarlo, also showing interesting texture variety in the lines. Renata Basile da Silva works the curve in her etchings, abstract roles of the lines or enlarged fingerprints. Through metal and mixed techniques, Sheila Goloborotko creates an installation. Her language is contemporary, socially engaging and somewhat abstract. Through her etching, Simone Rebelo relates to the well-known Brazilian neo-concrete movement. Ulysses Boscolo frequently does dry point and prints his diptychs on the same sheet of paper, combining profiles of a human and a bird in a series he calls Dreams. Walter Wagner combines aquatint and dry point to obtain his artwork. Alterations of perspective, scale and relation of the elements are part of his work as a post-postmodern artist.

 
In this global 21st Century there is no doubt that the artist expresses himself/herself in a variety of tendencies. Art is not what repeats itself but what expresses an intense new imagery or a new way of saying what has already been said before. The capacity of reproducing something and reaching a level of perfection is a reproduction that is not what makes something an art piece. Nowadays, artists can follow different tendencies and techniques at the same time, in just one piece or in different pieces, and nobody would have the right to say that because of doing so, the print is not good. The Art chapter of our present time discovers that ample diversity is a sign of capacity and richness, leading artists and the public to look for, above all, the "q" in “quality” and the “c” in “creativity”.


Graciela Kartofel
Independent Curator/Critic
New York, February 2008