Friday’s snapshot from the gallery …

Yesterday we went to three art exhibitions at two venues in Rio. The first was at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil called the Um Olhar sobre o Brasil: A Fotografia na Construção da Imagem da Nação.

A look at Brazil: Photography in the construction of the image of the  Nation was an exhibition organized by Fundación Mapfre and the Instituto Tomie Othake, whose aim is to present a wide panorama of national history through images.

The other two exhibitions were at the Caixa Cultural Centre; the first was Adriano de Aquino reads Ivan Serpa.

Ivan Serpa is the widely acclaimed pioneer of Concrete Art in the 1950s. His expansive body of work also includes important contributions to expressionism and geometric abstract art.

The second and the artist I found most pleasing was Lasar Segall and [his] journey on paper.  While we were able to discover his birthplace was in Lithuania and his date of birth 1891-1957 from the publicity material, we could see some inconsistencies regarding his wife and children.  Although my daughter was able to  translate some of the text,  the details from limited resources, without more historical knowledge it was difficult. We discovered more from an English speaking art history student who happened be passing.  He was able to fill us in on some of the gaps. Particularly about Segall’s second wife; Jenny Klabin Segall who was an artist in her own right and also a model in some of his works. She spent her time during his lif and after promoting Segall’s work  in the USA and Europe.  

All the exhibitions have put a little meat on the skeleton of knowledge that I had about Brazil and its growth through art and and art history.  While there remains the huge distance when I return to UK and of course the language different, there is hope that I will be able to apply my research skills and art history tools used with European art and can add more flesh to the bones.