Artist: Montez Magno

Poemata (It is all poetry)
March 30, 2016 – May 21, 2016
Galeria Pilar
São Paulo, Brazil

The latest exhibit by Brazilian artist Montez Magno (b. Pernambuco, 1934) contains over forty works, rigorously selected to reflect Magno’s sixty-year investigation of artistic language as expressed on a myriad of surfaces. Curated by art critic Lisette Lagnado.

Lagnado examines the artist’s poetic inflections, a lesser-known aspect of his work, highlighting the dialogue between painting and script; between “celestial letters” and poems.

“Poemata” seeks to establish non-hierarchical relations between two praxis of creation, making subtle transitions using works in different forms (for example, a painting and a score, a drawing and a poem), subtle just like the lines that appear in the white space on the surface of his work, be it paper, canvas or Styrofoam.

With lines at times vertical and at others horizontal, reminding us of the patterns of a notebook, the chosen works display a type of leitmotif in the vocabulary of the artist, independent of the chosen surface.

• Happenings

Artist: Montez Magno

Montez Magno
October 3 – November 8, 2014
Christinger de Mayo
Zurich, Switzerland

This exhibition brings a selection of Montez Magno works that developed his entropic impulse, broadly rooted in a sensitive and experimental dimension of spatiality. (…) Thus, more interested in invention, in the force of creation not only as an act, but rather as a constant exercise, Montez Magno rearranges materials as diverse and ordinary as a bar of soap, a watercolour pen or screws, constituting a centrifugal, variable oeuvre open to the other that – unconcerned with “structuring the world” in a universal spatiality (whether cosmological or cosmogonical) – is inclined, in turn, to create small, ephemeral and punctual arrangements which, in response to all variety of political and sensitive contexts, nonetheless have the power to make inventors out of all of us.

Selection of original text by Clarissa Diniz

Image: Montez Magno, “Untitled”, 2005

• Happenings

Translated from Portuguese

A great deal of my current work is based on things from here, from Recife, in the Northeast, but the Recifenses themselves do not realize it. I’m doing a survey or study of a forgotten and omitted side from Brazilian popular art: the abstractionist side. It is incredible what people do in terms of geometric abstraction. I am documenting with slides the diverse modalities of abstract geometric expression: party tents and blankets, patchwork, ice cream carts, popcorn, etc.; garage doors and other things that show up. It is fantastic, and you will sometimes find things of op-art, constructivism and concretism, all of this done in the most holly ignorance and naivety, but with a keen and intuitive sense of color and construction. These are the things from which I currently extract material for my work.

[…] Grande parte do meu trabalho atual é baseado em coisas daqui mesmo, do Recife, do Nordeste, mas os próprios recifenses não percebem isso. Estou fazendo uma pesquisa ou estudo do lado esquecido e omitido da arte popular brasileira: o lado abstracionista.

É incrível o que o povo faz em termos de abstração geométrica. Estou documentando com slides as diversas modalidades de expressão abstrato-geometrica: barracas de festa e de feira cobertas de retalhos, carroças de sorvete, de pipocas, etc; portões de garagem e outras coisas que vão aparecendo. É fantastico e voce encontra as vezes coisas de op-art, de concretismo e de construtivismo, tudo isso feito na mais santa ignorância e ingenuidade, mas com um agudo e intuitivo senso de cor e de construção. É dessas coisas que atualmente extraio material para meu trabalho.

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

• 1953-1957: Drawing and painting.
• 1963-1964: Fellow at Institute of Hispanic Culture, Madrid, Spain.

Prizes / Fellowships

• 1958: XVIII Salão de Pintura do Estado de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil.
• 1962: IX Salão Paulista de Arte Moderna – Galeria Prestes Maia, São Paulo, SP, Brazil.
• 1963: Fellowship – Instituto de Cultura Hispânica de Madrid.
• 1967: XVI Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, IX Bienal Internacional de Artes de São Paulo (Itamaraty Prize Acquisition), I Bienal Nacional de Artes Plásticas da Bahia (Salvador, Bahia) Incentive Prize.
• 1971: I Salão de Arte da Eletrobrás, Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro.

Solo Exhibitions

• 2012: “Galáxia”, Galeria Pilar, São Paulo, Brazil.
• 2011: “Retrospectiva Montez Magno: 55 Anos de Arte”, Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães, MAMAM, Recife, Brazil.
• 2010: “Thânatos”, Instituto de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, UFPE, Recife, Brazil.
• 2006: Museu do Estado de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil.
• 2000: Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães, MAMAM, Recife, Brazil.

Group Exhibitions

• 2013: “Imagine Brazil”, Astrup Fearnley, Oslo, Norway.
• 2013: “33o Panorama da Arte Brasileira”, MAM, São Paulo, Brazil.
• 1998: “Collective of Pernambuco Artists”, Fundação Júlio Resende, Oporto, Portugal.
• 1997: “International Exhibition of Visual Poetry”, Melbourne, Australia.
• 1996: “5th Biennial of Visual and Experimental Poetry”, Mexico City, Mexico.

Publications

• 2005: A véspera metálica. Recife: M&M Editor.
• 2002: Câmara Escura. Poesias 1988–2001. Recife: M&M Editor.
• 2002: As invenções de Cambroque. Poesia burlesca e satírica. Recife: M&M Editor.
• 1993: Notassons. Notações musicais e visuais aleatórias. 1970–1992. Coleção Belos & Raros. Recife: M&M Editor.
• 1992: O Diwân de Casa Forte. Recife: M&M Editor.

Collections

• MAMAM – Recife – Pernambuco.

• Artists