Alvenarias

Gladstone is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Alfredo Volpi (1896 – 1988) and Fábio Miguez. The show brings together significant works by Volpi, one of the most celebrated Brazilian painters of the 20th century, as well as a series of new and recent paintings and a sculpture by Brazilian contemporary artist Miguez. Though working decades apart, these artists utilize similar techniques and art historical references, resulting in two distinct yet interconnected approaches to artmaking. Infusing Brazilian architecture, design, and art historical traditions, with a focus on Italian Renaissance, into their compositions, the presentation demonstrates the powerful, intergenerational bond between these two visionary artists. Alfredo Volpi was born in Lucca, Italy in 1896 and emigrated to Cambuci, São Paulo as a young child. Without many resources afforded by his family, he worked in residential construction, specifically as a decorative painter for houses, from an early age. It was through this work that he learned to make tempera paint from egg whites and pigment, which he would use throughout his future career as an artist. Although he was academically untrained, Volpi was influenced by art history and movements like Concretism, the mid-century Brazilian artistic development that artists such as Tarsila do Amaral and Waldemar Cordeiro were affiliated with, which focused on a celebration of geometric abstraction. Angular forms and the everyday elements that he came across while walking through the city, such as streetscapes, building facades, and flags, became critical to the development of his visual language. Teetering between figuration and abstraction, Volpi’s singular style did not fit neatly into one category of artmaking during his lifetime, but has helped distinguish him as a pioneering artist who left behind an impressive oeuvre of works that continue to have a remarkable impact on contemporary art. Working since the 1980s, São Paulo-born Fábio Miguez has continued to develop an interdisciplinary approach to artmaking that incorporates many significant throughlines seen in Volpi’s work. Early in his career and alongside Carlito Carvalhosa, Nuno Ramos, Paulo Monteiro, and Rodrigo Andrade, Miguez founded the artist’s space Casa 7, which was created to reaffirm painting as an essential art form. Later, Miguez began to explore the potential in mediums such as sculpture and photography, which have contributed to the multidimensional, conceptual rigor of his layered practice. In 2011, he began a series called Atalhos (Shortcuts in English), which acted as a small-scale, painterly complement to his ambitious three-dimensional works and connected his work to his background studying as an architect. Certain forms and architectural vignettes, like doorways, arches, and walls, are transposed with precision while employing a vibrant palette of colors. This body of work led to Miguez’s more recent Volpi series, which further abstracts these structural details into inventive color field compositions. Paying direct homage to Volpi’s influence on his own inventive approach to exploring the everyday elements that encompass his life, these works continue the legacy and importance of abstraction in Brazilian art. On view in this exhibition are a series of paintings from Volpi’s most significant series’, which demonstrate his curious eye and perceptive ability to form abstractions through the figurative elements that encompassed his everyday life and art historical studies. Similarly, the works presented by Miguez are carefully considered, with some revisiting paintings by Renaissance masters and others by Volpi himself. Stripping their referents of all extraneous elements and thus presenting often abstract fragments, both artists offer tableaux that examine the spacial elements of the canvas and the illusory qualities of the painterly field. What brings these two artists together is this shared fascination with the worlds they inhabit, from the art historical traditions they have studied, to the overlooked, everyday objects and structures they have encountered while living in their respective environments. Through the modality of painting and artmaking, Volpi and Miguez offer entry points through which the viewer can access the lived experiences of these formidable and curious artists.