AUTODIDACT: Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, Heitor dos Prazeres, Chico da Silva & Rubem Valentim | Almine Rech
This small group show features four mid-20th century Brazilian artists, three of whom aren’t included in the massive Royal Academy exhibition on the same theme over the road. I assume this was a deliberate curatorial choice on the commercial gallery’s part, to fill in some gaps in the institutional record.
Lucky us, given the artists’ quality and distinctiveness. To me, the biggest RA omission is Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, who has three of his little oil-on-board landscapes in the Almine Rech show. This artist had the monomaniacal focus and work ethic of a Georgio Morandi. Like Morandi, he avoided the bright lights of the bigger cities, staying in Belo Horizonte throughout his long and artistically productive life: old as the century, he died in 1995, and worked to the end.
‘Untitled’ (1990)
As the title of the Almine Rech show suggests, Lorenzato was self-taught. His works - there must be hundreds out there - were untitled, and neatly signed and dated. He exclusively painted the landscapes that surrounded him, reducing and simplifying everyday scenes and objects to their essential shapes. (Again, very Morandi) Houses became simple cubes of colour. Trees fluffy blobs. The sky, a depthless block. The hard board backing makes everything brighter and flatter than it would be on canvas.
Lorenzato’s strangeness is in his surfaces. He literally combed his paint after application, with a fork or a brush. It dried into spaghetti-like wavy strands. This seals in the dreamy airtight unreality of his scenes. Scenes of bright little houses and trees and sky which might otherwise come across as sentimental and twee, were it not for their odd, unreal textures.
Always a big name in Brazil, Lorenzato is gaining ground internationally these days, having been represented by commercial gallery juggernaut David Zwirner for the past few years. I knew about him thanks to catching Zwirner shows in London in 2019 and New York in 2024.
So I missed him at the RA. And it felt good to be in his dreamy presence again, here.
AUTODIDACT: Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, Heitor dos Prazeres, Chico da Silva & Rubem Valentim is at Almine Rech (London). 16 January - 22 February 2025