ExhibitionNovember 22, 2024
Rubem Valentim
ICA Miami presents “Crossroads: Rubem Valentim's 1960s,” the first U.S. museum exhibition of the Afro-Brazilian painter Rubem Valentim (Salvador, Brazil, 1922; São Paulo, 1991). The exhibition will be on view from November 21 through March 30, 2025.
Valentim explored painting through geometric abstraction, addressing formal concerns; without neglecting Brazilian culture and the spiritual practices that intersect in this society. The show focuses on the works he produced in the 1960s and the transformation of his thinking and work during this period. Valentim created artworks characterized by geometric compositions; like Waldemar Cordeiro and Geraldo de Barrios, his work responded to the need for composition clarity, assertive communication, and offered tools to a population now urbanized with new communication systems and technologies.
Between 1963 and 1966, Valentim lived in Europe, settled in Rome, where he held his first exhibition outside Brazil. He learned about African art, which ended up influencing his pictorial practice, and became interested in lines, shallow spaces and geometry. Valentim was inclined to represent figures that alluded to totems, objects of cult ceremonies, fragments of temples and signs associated with Afro-Brazilian deities. Upon his return to Brazil, his painting rejected pictorial illusion and employed a single color on a white background.
Valentim explored painting through geometric abstraction, addressing formal concerns; without neglecting Brazilian culture and the spiritual practices that intersect in this society. The show focuses on the works he produced in the 1960s and the transformation of his thinking and work during this period. Valentim created artworks characterized by geometric compositions; like Waldemar Cordeiro and Geraldo de Barrios, his work responded to the need for composition clarity, assertive communication, and offered tools to a population now urbanized with new communication systems and technologies.
Between 1963 and 1966, Valentim lived in Europe, settled in Rome, where he held his first exhibition outside Brazil. He learned about African art, which ended up influencing his pictorial practice, and became interested in lines, shallow spaces and geometry. Valentim was inclined to represent figures that alluded to totems, objects of cult ceremonies, fragments of temples and signs associated with Afro-Brazilian deities. Upon his return to Brazil, his painting rejected pictorial illusion and employed a single color on a white background.
