100 Years of Iberê Camargo

The Iberê Camargo Foundation opened on November 19, 2014 a special exhibition to commemorate its artist namesake's centennial. Curated by art critics Agnaldo Farias, Icleia Cattani, and Jacques Leenhardt, the show was titled Iberê Camargo: Twentieth Century and brought together 33 paintings, six engravings, and thirty drawings by Camargo, set to dialog with the work of 19 contemporary artists invited to participate. In total, 92 artworks were on display, with the idea of showing tensions or approaches between the paintings, prints, and drawings of the subject of the homage and the production of artists from different generation and languages. The dialog was built with Ângelo Venosa, Arthur Lescher, Carlos Fajardo, Carmela Gross, Cia. De Foto, Daniel Acosta, Edith Derdyk, Eduardo Frota, Eduardo Haesbaert, Fabio Miguez, Francisco Kingler, Gil Vicente, Jarbas Lopes, José Bechara, José Rufino, Karin Lambrecht, Lenir de Miranda, Regina Silveira, and Rodrigo Andrade. The result, says Agnaldo Farias, was amplified by the magnificent space of the museum, the work of Álvaro Siza. The curator guides our attention to the unexpected encounters that took place: "surprising neighborliness regardless of the clash of languages, given that while Iberê Camargo was primarily a painter, several of his colleagues practice very diverse languages". Sculpture, installation, and photography were present in the exhibition. The building, a project by Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza Vieira to hold a museum with Camargo's oeuvre, was thus transformed into a space for the celebration of the arts. In the selection of Iberê Camargo's works for the exhibition, the criterion was to focus his modern production; this is to say, to exhibit works dated between 1950 and the 1980s. Curator Icleia Cattani notes that the modern context defined his mode of creation, his themes, forms, and issues. At the same time, Cattani adds, the artist focused on the future, and with the artistic production of that future the intention was to project a dialog: contemporary artists who bring a different visions of the world and of art. In this way, the stage was set for an opportunity to show the contemporariness of Camargo's work. The highlights in this confrontation with the 19 invited artists were issues connected with "order and motion, shadows, and death as drivers for the creation of works that are very diverse", Cattani notes. Critic Jacques Leenhardt points out that the curators chose not to present a retrospective that added different moments, but to build instead a projective view of Camargo's oeuvre. They decided "to focus on the work he created after the appearance of fishing reels as his theme, this is to say between 1950 and the powerful, mysterious end of the 1980s". In this way, Leenhardt says, "the tragic dimension of Camargo's pictorial work, so unique in the Brazilian context, is defined as an important axis for a reading of his work, where we find a Sisyphean energy that is typical of his artistic commitment". In dialog with the exhibition, arts like literature, dance, and film were also present. There were performances and a seminar around Camargo's work. A special educational program was also prepared for the occasion. The exhibition remains open through March 29, and it has grabbed the attention of the general public as well as art-world specialists.