Adriana Varejão – Modernisms

Comunicato stampa

‘In the wake of Brazilian modernism, the Portuguese colonial tradition of tilework was reinterpreted and transformed into a distinctly Brazilian, modern, and widely shared visual language — one embedded in everyday urban life rather than in representations of permanence and power.’ — Adriana Varejão

This new body of work is conceived in direct dialogue with the artist’s participation in the Brazilian Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

While the tile paintings presented in the pavilion draw inspiration from Baroque and religious tilework of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the paintings in Modernisms shift the investigation towards Brazil’s modern period. They represent a temporal leap: from colonial tilework to modernist tiles, and from a tradition inherited from Portugal to a visual language that Brazil reinvented and made its own.