Entre a Razão e a Emoção

Year: 2006

UBS Pactual and Galeria de Arte Ipanema close the year with a group show of five of Brazil's greatest artists: Ismael Nery, Alfredo Volpi, Milton Dacosta, Iberê Camargo and Ivan Serpa.

The exhibition "Entre a Razão e a Emoção" (Between Reason and Emotion) once again marks the importance of Banco Pactual's contribution to the Brazilian art circuit in recent years with the publication of books about these artists.
To hold the event, which runs from December 14 to January 28, 58 works by artists Volpi, Ivan Serpa, Milton Dacosta, Iberê Camargo and Ismael Nery were gathered at Galeria de Arte Ipanema. The show, curated by Denise Matar, allows a reflection on the paths of art in the twentieth century, and especially on the historical duality of reason and emotion.
The exhibition presents 6 works by Ismael Nery, with emphasis on "Retrato de Adalgisa" work from his monochromatic phase, in which the artist plays with light and shadow over deep blues, cutting out the striking profile of his wife Adalgisa.

"Ismael Nery was one of the most unique artists in modern Brazilian production. In his portraits and self-portraits, Nery shows the divine self and the satanic self, the male and female self, merges with his friend Murilo and with Adalgisa; the artist overlaps, duplicates, multiplies". (Denise Mattar, Ismael Nery, Pactual 2004)

From Alfredo Volpi, 14 works were selected. The depuration of the forms and use of the temper is the characteristic of these works whose porous and velvety chromaticity is unequalled. Admired by concretists and neoconcretists, Volpi does not adhere strictly to any of these currents, being closer to the so-called "sensitive geometry".

"The evolution of the landscapes from the mid-1930s to the end of the 1940s allows us to perceive the gradual rebound of that complex of hillsides and houses to a verticalized space, unfolding in bands, triangles and colored parallelograms". (Sonia Salztein, Volpi, Pactual, 2000).

Milton Dacosta is represented by 18 works, showing some of his phases. From the constructivism of his "Castelos" and "Naturezas Mortas", to the precise composition of his "Heads", and the sensuality of his "Vênus".

"Dacosta never assumes the role of vanguardist, innovative or revolutionary. Contrary to the controversial tone of our modernists, he opts for a more realistic vision of the artist's mission. On one hand, the rigor and geometry of his compositions (both constructive and figurative), on the other, qualities such as lyricism, sensitivity, intuition, fantasy". (Vera Beatriz Siqueira, Milton Dacosta, Pactual, 2005).

Iberê Camargo, with 10 works, is represented in its various phases. There is a landscape of the beginning of his career and works from the series Natureza Morta, Carretel and Bicicletas with its dramatic and expressionist charge.

"Iberê is a dostoevalsquiano man, distressed, tragic, sinister, violent, tormented by conscience. [He assumes] painting and its history as the integral basis of the revolt. (...) The self-awareness that takes the form of anguish and despair cannot be situated in a defined space and historical time. It accepts no limits. Late romantic, therefore historically displaced, and yet more desperately romantic". (Paulo Venãncio, Iberê Camargo, Pactual, 2001)

Ivan Serpa was a multiple artist, who was not afraid of making mistakes and who dared to accomplish what was meaningful to him at every moment. The main characteristic that marked his work was the static restlessness. As an artist, he was a geometric who needed to talk about life. He loved method and creative chaos, he was fascinated by symmetry and it was the theories of concretism that best expressed himself.
The exhibition presents 10 works of the artist. From his expressionist phase is the work "Rosto", a huge head that bursts with pain, exhaling an enormous despair. There is also a work from his abstract-informal phase and his last series, when he returns to geometry in a series of large canvases where he positions concentric circles in a very precise way, from his interest in geomancy.

"Serpa was an artist who repudiated the complacency and stagnation of thinking and looking(...). On a 1972 canvas, the artist reads the geomaniac figure "Laetitia" that symbolizes happiness, the joy of living. Perhaps this is the key to understand Ivan Serpa. His adoration for life in all its plurality". (Fabiana Werneck Barcinski, Ivan Serpa,Pactual, 2003).

This exhibition at Galeria de Arte Ipanema shows that the dualism of reason and emotion is not necessarily antagonist and that it can and has been manipulated by artists as a partnership, a coexistence, which can be peaceful or very tumultuous, but rationally emotional.

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