ROBERTO MAGALHÃES AT SILVIA CINTRA + BOX 4

It’s with great satisfaction that the gallery opens it’s 2021 Calendar. The first individual exhibition of the year also tracks Roberto Magalhães’ inauguration at the gallery. Unpublished works were selected for the exhibition of this great brazilian artist, who has just turned 81 years old. Since he was a child, Roberto Magalhães already showed an undeniable vocation for drawing, but at the age of 20 he decided to quit his studies and dedicate exclusively to this practice. Consequently, the first professional works appeared, such as bottle labels and small hand-made promotional pieces. Then, album covers, books, logos and advertisements.Parallel with these works, Roberto also developed a series of nanquim drawings, related to his own universe of dreams, fantasy and symbolis, but these works were only exhibited in 1962 at the gallery attached to Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, when the artist first approached the world of visual arts.From that moment on, Roberto approached several artists and participated in many exhibitions, until the revolutionary exhibition “Opinião 65” came at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. Along with artists such as Antonio Dias, Rubens Gerchman and Carlos Vergara, Roberto was responsible for inaugurating a new language in Brazilian art, the Nova Figuração.

Despite the recognition of his work, in 1969, Roberto decides to abandon artistic production and dedicates himself to meditation and Buddhism, including being one of the founders of the Buddhist Society of Brazil. After 4 years dedicated to the administrative functions of the center, which hardly matched his introspective temperament, Roberto decides to return to his drawings and paintings, which start to bring reflections and influences from his mystical experience.

It is also during this period that the artist began to produce handwritten and illustrated notebooks where he recorded his studies on homeopathy, medicinal plants, kabbalah and alchemy. These records continue to be made until today.

From the 1980s onwards, Roberto began to divide himself between urban life and long periods of seclusion in the mountains of Visconde de Mauá, where he continued to produce uninterruptedly over the following decades. In the 2000s, in addition to his well-known figures, flower pots and fantastic scenes, a world of abstract images began to emerge in his work that, according to the artist, had been accumulating inside since all time.

Those are the images, still little known to the public that accompanies his work, that can be seen in the gallery’s exhibition. Altogether there will be 12 gouaches and 3 paintings made especially for the show. The film “Ver Ouvir Roberto Magalhães”, by Antônio Carlos da Fontoura, will also be part of the exhibition. In 26 minutes, the film makes a retrospective on the work of Roberto Magalhães, leading the viewer to the artist’s fantastic daily life.

Roberto Magalhães, throughout his 60 years of career, participated in numerous exhibitions in Brazil and abroad. Considered one of the main national historical artists, his works are part of the collection of the main Brazilian collections and museums.

Excerpt from the text “EU”, written by Roberto Magalhães

“During one night, a determined and very special night of work and introspection, I had a kind of “artistic experience”. If I were a mystic, I would say that I would have had a mystical experience. These things are very difficult to define, but due to the lack of other words, or perhaps due to the difficulties in finding them, I would say that I saw an “irradiation emanating from the colors” of the paint tubes, or something like that. I also understood, that night, an infinite possibility of combining the forms and the freedom so sought to do on paper or on canvas only what I want, as if the whole past of conditioning disappeared at that moment. I was free!

From then on, my mind opened up, my drawings and paintings became explosions of color and I started to enjoy the great happiness of having found my own way.”