Continue Aldo Bonadei (1906 - 1974) Aldo Cláudio Felipe Bonadei, widely known as Aldo Bonadei (São Paulo June 17th, 1906 — São Paulo, January 16th, 1974) was a Brazilian painter. As a member of the Grupo Santa Helena he was distinguished for his erudition. His varied interests made him develop work in poetry, fashion and theater. Bonadei was culturally important in the 1930s and 1940s, when modern art was being consolidated in Brazil. He was a pioneer of the abstract art in that country. In the end of the 1950s, he worked as costume designer for Nydia Lícia & Sérgio Cardoso company, and in two films by Walter Hugo Khoury.

Continue Milton Dacosta (1915 - 1988) Milton Dacosta was a Brazilian painter who was born in 1915. Their work was featured in several exhibitions at key galleries and museums, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and the Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo (Galpão) . Milton Dacosta's work has been offered at auction multiple times, with realized prices ranging from $5,247 USD to $171,750 USD, depending on the size and medium of the artwork. Since 2010 the record price for this artist at auction is $171,750 USD for Figura, sold at Christie's New York in 2013. Milton Dacosta is featured in 6th Mercosul Biennial, a piece from the e-flux in 2007. The artist died in 1988.

Continue Maria Leontina (1917 - 1984) A fundamental artist of the post-war period in Brazilian art, Leontina begins her production in the 1940’s with a modernist aesthetic in pieces on canvas and paper. Her drawings and paintings present a figurative language that rapidly develops in the direction of an expressionist approach. Throughout the 1950’s, the iconography of her work little by little surpasses traditional themes such as still-lifes and portraits and then urban sceneries and geometric constructions arise. In this period, the artist flirts with constructivism, at the moment prominent in the plastic arts in Brazil, but her work doesn’t adhere to the dogmas of the movement and thus her relation to shapes and colors happens in a suave and transparent way, the so-called “sensible geometry”. From the 1960’s and during her last decades of production, the works transit between the abstract and the figurative, but in both, however, it is noticeable the presence of a taciturn atmosphere that permeates all of her oeuvre. Never mind the period or the technique used by the artist, her work is continuously refined, sharp and indicates layers and varied nuances to be absorbed by the spectator, both pictorially and transcendentally. Leontina is often remembered in history as the wife of Milton Dacosta. This exhibition aims at a revision of this perspective; besides showing the public a general take on the works of this essential artist to the national art, the show intends to highlight a production that was visually and conceptually a pioneer in its time by mixing geometry, figuration and abstraction in a coherent and singular manner, being possibly one of the intersection points of modern and contemporary Brazilian art.

Continue Eleonore Koch (1926 - 2018) Eleonore Koch, also known as Lore Koch was a German-born Brazilian painter and sculptor. She was best known for paintings that evoke the memory of everyday objects, while also exploring the sensory nature of painting through a tension between color planes and line.

Oswaldo Goeldi Cildo Meireles Frans Krajcberg Di Cavalcanti Alfredo Volpi Hélio Oiticica Tarsila do Amaral The Exhibition ​ In 2004, after a long period of renovations, the Escritório de Arte reopened with an inaugural collective exhibition that presented works by major modernist artists in a totally reformulated space designed by the studio Pileggi Arquitetura. Trajectory An imaginary collection ​ PAULO KUCZYNSKI ​ What makes a young student abandon his biology degree in 1969 to become a marchand de tableaux? To answer that question I suppose you really have to know the art dealer Benjamin Steiner and see him in action in his house, selling some masterpiece or other (Gomide’s Last Supper, for example). It’s fascinating to watch him at work from the room next door. And you’ve also got to have a peek into the many drawers in that house, full of drawings by Ismael Nery, which “Benja” would show while recounting the tragic story of this artist, who spent over thirty years in oblivion. It was from Benja that I learned one of the first lessons of art dealing: stockpile works now to increase their value later. And it was also from Benja that I learned how to buy, with passion in one eye and disdain in the other—and a little guile and astuteness thrown in. In 1967, still a student, I was introduced to Volpi by Professor Mario Schenberg, who was a staunch supporter of the students’ movement. Volpi, like many other artists from the day, would collaborate with the movement by donating paintings. It was only later that I realized the full extent of the human grandeur I had been privileged to meet and how little I had been able to capture of his wisdom. Sometimes, we’re just too young… In 1969, I started buying Volpi’s works at his house, in Cambuci, and selling them on to my small circle: besides Benja, there was Cesar Luiz Pires de Mello, owner of Cosme Velho gallery, and a good friend to this day. The Volpis smelled of that delicious cinnamon oil he used to mix his tempera. As the smell would linger for some months, I developed this habit of sniffing the Volpis people offered me to see how recent they were. Volpi didn’t paint much and his paintings were in high demand, but I had the privilege of managing to snag at least one a month. Perhaps because he liked me, he’d sometimes tell me, between one straw cigarette and another, about friends and relatives who had old paintings of his they might want to sell. And so began my life as a hunter: day after day, following up lead after lead, I’d track down Volpis from the 20s and 30s—highly appreciated then. Even today, the thrill of going into a house without knowing exactly what I was going to find—a mediocrity or a masterpiece?—is the best part of my job. These were dark times in Brazil, and tracking down and selling paintings was like an escape from reality. Then, one fine night in the early 70s, I was having dinner with Benjamin Steiner and Paulo Roberto Strieder (a friend from my teens, neighbor and one-time business partner), when Benja spilled a name to us—a pair of know-nothing youths—which we’d never heard before: Theon Spanudis, man and collection. Without wasting any time, we went to see him a few days later, and I must confess that the sight of the retired psychoanalyst, a near hermit, scared me a bit. Perhaps out of caution, he met us at his mother’s apartment on the ground floor of the building he lived in. Straight off, I found the absence of any Volpis on the walls of that quasi-monastic cloister rather odd. The man with the penetrating stare, paused speech, and contained yet evident rigidity, was carefully observing and assessing his two young visitors. At a certain point, he disappeared inside the apartment somewhere and re-emerged after a long while with an extraordinary Volpi in his hands: Garagem Preta (Black Garage), as I call it today, and he gave it to us to sell. We sold it the very next day, and, with our enthusiasm at the prompt result, we won his trust. He then opened up heaven’s gates to us, and we got to see the surprising collection Theon had built throughout the 50s. He had some of Volpi’s most poetic moments, the like of which I could never have imagined, paintings that eluded the known phases and labels. Theon jokingly called them his “Toys”, but these were pure poetry. He kept these toys with him to the end, and gradually sold off the rest—which was plenty. Besides the promise of good business and my obvious appetite, what you could really see there was Spanudis’ keen eye. Here was a man who knew how to spot the sublime among the many canvases I had seen in my time spent with Volpi. This selective knack marked me deeply, as it continues to do to this day, and I can now see the germ of my own working process in that encounter with Theon: spend a long time looking at paintings, thinking them through, selecting them and hearing other people’s opinions so you can discern the most inspired moments in each artist’s career. A few years later, my monologue with paintings expanded into a dialogue with Gerard Loeb (my business partner for fourteen years), a man with refined taste, a true appreciator of art and music. We would make comparisons the whole time: for us, Volpi was without doubt all Mozart. As Gerard didn’t have kids, and I had lost my father, I became his artistic son. After the first few years—of intense obsession with Volpi—, my horizons broadened and I began to discover the many wonderful artists we’ve had throughout the 20th Century. While some were still alive in the 70s, I had little contact with them, as my eye was always drawn to their most creative phases, and their very best work. Even with the grand masters (with few exceptions), there is always a learning curve leading up to the revolutionary, innovative zenith. And after the peak, which may or may not last some years, there invariably comes repetition and decline. Identifying the golden years of each artist and resisting the commercial temptations to stray from them is the challenge facing the art dealer in this selective pursuit. That, and a merciless approach to what lacks quality is what I learned from my chosen peers: Antonio Maluf and Jean Boghici. Over the decades that followed I developed a great affinity with my clientele and was able to direct my work towards building important Brazilian collections that recovered and revealed some real treasures. Now, from 2004 on, I see that this project is about to expand alongside the old corner townhouse I’ve been based in for the last thirty years (as charming as it is unassuming). I just wanted a larger exhibition hall, but the design by Sergio Pileggi ended up giving me a gallery downstairs too, a new space that will enable me to hold exhibitions whenever a set of works, however small, reveals a new perspective or comes together around some special meaning. There comes a crucial moment in the work of a marchand—normally so solitary—when it’s no longer about search or discovery, but about presenting works to the customer. It’s only when a piece of art strikes that cord in the back of the client’s gaze that a real bond forms. And without that “click”, there’s no deal, no point in trying to talk someone around. You may as well just move on to the next painting. Deep down, the question I always ask myself is: “Who does this painting speak to?”. After 35 years, that cord of seduction and passion has thrummed so often that various collectors have become my friends and together have been able to give me a glimpse of that imaginary collection. As the art dealer chooses and gathers artworks only to scatter them far and wide, that glimpse is a rare moment indeed. This exhibition shows a part of what I have guarded in memory over all these years, and I offer it here as my little tribute to those who, by falling in love with art, create a special place for it inside. ​

Adriana Varejão Alberto da Veiga Guignard 1896 - 1962 Aldo Bonadei 1906 - 1974 Alfredo Volpi 1896 - 1988 Almir Mavignier 1925 - 2018 Amilcar de Castro 1920 - 2002 Antonio Bandeira 1922 - 1967 Antonio Dias 1944 - 2018 Antonio Henrique Amaral 1935 - 2015 Arthur Luiz Piza Burle Marx 1909 - 1994 Candido Portinari 1903 - 1962 Cicero Dias 1907 - 2003 Cildo Meireles Claudio Tozzi Cruz Diez 1923 - 2019 Dan Flavin 1933 - 1996 Djanira da Motta e Silva 1914 - 1979 Eleonore Koch 1926 - 2018 Eliseu Visconti 1866 - 1944 Emiliano Di Cavalcanti 1897 - 1976 Ernesto De Fiori 1884 - 1945 Ernesto Neto Flávio de Carvalho 1899 - 1973 François Morellet 1926 - 2016

Continue Alfredo Volpi (1896 - 1988) Born on April 14, 1896, in Lucca, Italy, Alfredo Volpi was later brought to Brazil by his parents where they made their permanent residence. Volpi had developed profound interest in arts since the very early age. He created his first major artwork at the age of twelve, which was deemed naturalist as it applied realism and seemed divorced from artificiality and artistic conventionality. In fact, he did it all on his own by teaching himself the various forms of arts. Others also viewed his early work as being expressionist, having a distinct distorted quality to it. The major influence on his early works was the Brazilian landscape painter Ernesto De Fiori. Besides painting multifarious subjects of his interest, Volpi also painted façades of houses in a unique fashion. These facades were perceived highly stylized and colorful and this theme seemed to encompass all his 1950s work. The art critics rightfully called his work the “historical façades”. Although he never claimed to be part of concretist movement, that artwork of his deemed influenced by concrete art form. The next decade witnessed the dawn of his trademark “banderinhas”. Those were small flags which were major part of Brazilian folklore, originated from the popular festa junina. The small-flag pattern he used displayed the saturated sense of color combination and balanced composition, which resulted in cementing Volpi’s position as one of the prominent artists of the era. In the recent years, some of the most prestigious art museums are still displaying his work almost three decades after his demise. He died on April 28, 1988, São Paulo, Brazil. MAM São Paulo displayed his body of artwork in 2006. The next year Curitiba held an exhibition showcasing his paintings. Josef Albers had known to be the major influence on his work. His work manifested a profound knowledge of Italian Renaissance painters as he made use of tempera for his paintings. Alfredo Volpi received Best National Painter award in 1953 as being the crucial part of Brazilian cultural modernist movement.

Continue Victor Vasarely (1906 - 1997) Considered the father of the Op Art, Victor Vasarely was born on April 9th, 1908 in Pécs, Hungary. Internationally recognized as one of the most important artists of the 20th century, his innovations in color and optical illusion have had a strong influence on many modern artists. Spanning most of his career, our collection of his prints and sculptures explores his forays into some of his most famous works such as the plastic alphabet and other iconic periods. In 1925, Vasarely was accepted into the University of Budapest’s School of Medicine where he attended for 2 years. Deciding that he wanted to take his life in a different direction, he enrolled in the Poldini-Volkman Academy of Painting in 1927. Though a medical education might have seemed superfluous compared to his new career in art, the time that Vasarely spent in medical school gave him a strong basis in scientific method and objectivity. This basis continued to manifest in his unique style of art. After his first one-man show in 1930, at the Kovacs Akos Gallery in Budapest, Vasarely moved to Paris. For the next thirteen years, he devoted himself to graphic studies. His lifelong fascination with linear patterning led him to draw figurative and abstract patterned subjects, such as his series of harlequins, checkers, tigers, and zebras. During this period, Vasarely also created multi-dimensional works of art by super-imposing patterned layers of cellophane on one another to attain the illusion of depth. Around 1947, Vasarely discovered his place in abstract art. Influenced by his experiences at Breton Beach of Belle Isle, he concluded that “internal geometry” could be seen below the surface of the entire world. He conceived that form and color were inseparable. “Every form is a base for color, every color is the attribute of a form.” Forms from nature were thus transposed into purely abstract elements in his paintings. Already an established and recognized avant-garde artist, Galerie Denise Rene hosted a major group exhibition in connection with Vasarely’s painting experiments with movement. This was the first important exhibition of kinetic art and included works by Yaacov Agam, Pol Bury, Soto, and Jean Tinguely, among others. During the 1950’s, Vasarely wrote a series of manifestos on the use of optical phenomena for artistic purposes. Together with his paintings and prints, these were a significant influence on younger artists. According to the artist, “In the last analysis, the picture-object in pure composition appears to me as the last link in the family ‘paintings,’ still possessing by its shining beauty, an end in itself. But it is already more than a painting, the forms and colors which compose it are still situated on the plane, but the plastic event which they trigger fuses in front of and in the plane. It is thereby an end, but also a beginning, a kind of launching pad for future achievements.”

Continue Djanira da Motta e Silva Djanira Motta E Silva was born in 1914 and was predominantly inspired by the 1930s. Throughout the 1930s, many political ideologies such as Marxist Socialism, Capitalist Democracy, and the Totalitarianism of both Communism and Fascism were engaged in struggles for power, and characterised the political atmosphere of the era. n Europe, Surrealism continued to be prominent, and had grown to have influence worldwide. Leading artists took the ideas posed by Surrealism and incorporated them into their pioneering political philosophies, creating a new kind of magic realism. This was exemplified in the work of artists such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Riviera in Mexico.

Continue Julio Le Parc Argentinian artist resident in Paris. Born at Mendoza in the Argentine. Studied at the School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires; became interested in the group Arte Concreto-Invención and Fontana's Spazialismo movement. Went to Paris with Sobrino in 1958 on a French government scholarship and settled there. In reaction against tachisme, took as starting-point the work of Vasarely, the writings of Mondrian and the tradition of Constructivism; began in 1959 to make geometrical abstract paintings based on predetermined systems, first in black and white, then in colour. Co-founder with Morellet, Sobrino, Yvaral and others of the Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel 1960. In 1960 made his first reliefs and his first 'Continual Mobiles', carrying his research into three dimensions, and introducing movement and light. Further types of light work from 1962 incorporating moving projected or reflected lights, pulsating lights etc., and from 1964 works based on distorting mirrors, the displacement of the spectator and so on. Increasing interest in the active involvement of the spectator by means of labyrinths, play rooms, etc. First one-man exhibition at the Howard Wise Gallery, New York, 1966 and was awarded the main painting prize at the 1966 Venice Biennale. Lives in Paris.

Continue Candido Portinari (1903 - 1962) The Brazilian painter Cândido Portinari (1903-1962) is best known for his murals, which fuse nativist and expressionist elements in a powerful and individual style. Cândido Portinari was born of Italian immigrant parents in the town of Brodosque in the coffee-rich state of São Paulo. No formal education was available to the boy beyond the first years of grade school. He attributed his interest in art to the fact that at the age of 8 he began helping a house painter. He went to Rio de Janeiro when he was 15 and worked as an artists' apprentice. He was always to approach his work in a disciplined and methodical way, regarding art as a handicraft or skill that could be consciously perfected. Portinari won admission to the National Fine Arts School and in 1928 received the coveted annual travel fellowship to Europe. The experience shook him loose from the academic style he had been taught and brought him into the so-called Brazilian modernist artistic movement.

Continue Arthur Luiz Piza (1928 - 2017) Arthur Luiz Piza was born in San Paulo (Brazil) in 1928. At a very young age, he began his studies in art, in painting, as a student of Antonio Gomide. He settled in Paris in 1951. Living in post-war Montparnasse, Piza regularly attended Friedlaender ’s engraving workshop, developing his techniques in copper engraving, etching and intaglio. From the time of his arrival in France, the artist participated in a large number of group exhibitions, both in his host country and abroad (San Paulo Biennale, the Biennale of Ljubljana, the Grenchen Print Biennale, Kassel Documenta, Salon des Réalités Nouvelles , etc.), the recipient of numerous first prizes. He also presented his work in solo exhibitions in Brazil and France; in the Galerie La Hune (Paris), he had a dozen shows between 1953 and 1991. From 1958, Piza devoted himself primarily to burin engraving. Starting from this period, the artist created reliefs and collages, as well as sculpted objects, porcelain and jewellery. During the 1960’s, Arthur Luiz Piza became known as one of the most compelling representatives of the art of engraving. His style is very personal: the plate is cut, gashed, gouged, hammered, sculpted in small, successive marks that, like scales, interlock and overlap; hollows become volumes. The artist works with the perception of matter, matter that is imaginary and poeticised. The colours used by the artist are often ochres, muted and subdued. Arthur Luiz Piza lived and worked in Paris. The painter, engraver and sculptor died on May 26, 2017 in Paris, at the age of 89 years.