This show caps off the House, Garden, Collection trilogy. And for Casa Roberto Marinho, dedicated to Brazilian modernism, it opens new paths in the permeable border between the modern and the contemporary

For the show A Escolha do Artista na Coleção Roberto Marinho [The Artist’s Choice in the Roberto Marinho Collection] five leading visual artists were invited to select pieces from the Casa’s collection with the aim of producing an interaction with their own works. A fundamental intention of this project was for the “conversation” to take place in the terms established by the artist themselves.

Raul Mourão evinces a contrast between the idyllic Brazil of Portinari’s painting and the current time.

Cristina Canale selected portraits, for the most part, and produced a new work that proposes a pictorial dialogue, imagining the paths and choices of Di Cavalcanti in his 1963 oil painting "Ivete Rocha Bahia".

"Sinto sua falta" [I Miss You] is the title of the multiple artwork made especially for the show by Antonio Manuel. Together with a diptych and the series "Frutos do Espaço" [Fruits of Space] it interacts with works by José Pancetti: the painting about childhood, "Boneco" [Doll], 1939, a favorite of the collection’s owner, and a set of landscapes that have only survived in this form, on canvases.

Beth Jobim identified questions inherent to her own personal poetics in the vertical strip paintings by Ione Saldanha. And she reproduced a text by Lygia Pape about Ione, creating a new layer of possibilities in this encounter of three masters of Brazilian art.

Waltercio Caldas proposes that we shut out the exteriorities that can interfere in our perception. Art is confined within art itself. Before its naming by us or by its author: "O momento antes dos nomes" [The Moment before the Names].

Lauro Cavalcanti
Executive Director Casa Roberto Marinho
March 2021