Descripción de la Exposición
Kogan Amaro Gallery exhibits works by Mr. Sérvulo Esmeraldo in Zurich, Switzerland.
Jouer avec le Cercle, exhibition curated by Mr. Ricardo Resende, reunites works that represent the period in which Mr. Esmeraldo lived in Europe.
Sérvulo Esmeraldo’s singular work (1929 – 2017) will be exhibited from January 10th, 2020, at Galeria Kogan Amaro’s Zurich space. Curated by Mr. Ricardo Resende, the show Jouer avec le Cercle highlights the multiple character of Mr. Esmeraldo’s work, an artist who lived a significant part of his life in France. The ensemble assembled at the exhibition synthesizes the addition the engraver and draftsman brought graphics into the objects and sculptures in just the right measure.
Galeria Kogan Amaro’s commitment to distributing Brazilian art in Europe through its Zurich venue acquires momentum with this exhibition. Mr. Esmeraldo exhibited individually in Switzerland back in 1961, 1963, 1968 (Galerie Maurice Bridel, Lausanne), 1971, 1975 (White Gallery, Lutry, Lausanne) and in 2016 (Beurret & Bailly Auktionen, Basel), in addition to further partaking in collective shows, plus in important collections throughout the country, which he frequently visited during his time in Europe, where he built significant professional and personal relationships.
Drawings, metal engravings, objects and sculptures crafted among the 1960s and the 2000s make up this exhibition of the kinetic artist, renown for the originality of his work he named Excitables.
The works chosen in Mr. Resende’s curatorship reinforce Mr. Esmeraldo’s interest in the permutational game of forms to generate new ones, especially circles. The combination of reason and intuition reflect the artist’s dynamism and subtle differential. Born in 1929 in the city of Crato, Ceará state, he largely contributed to his timely art. After a long stay in France, Mr. Esmeraldo went back to Brazil, settling in Fortaleza, Ceará’s state capital. It is here where his now mature great work was presented in ways of monumental sculptures’ sets in the urban space of Ceara’s capital.
“His works are essential when it comes to geometric art. The artist observes the constructive side and the way things work with a graphic thinking, permanently “geometrizing” and “animating” shapes, “explains Mr. Resende. “It is as if he wished to soften the edges, burrs and ‘imperfections of things one observes in the world by’ saving ‘in gesture, subtracting shapes and exploring rounded shapes,” he adds.
About Mr. Sérvulo Esmeraldo
(Crato Ceará, 1929 – Fortaleza 2017) Designer, sculptor, engraver, illustrator and painter, began his professional career in the late 1940s, attending the free workshop of The Cearense Society of Plastic Arts (SCAP) in Fortaleza. He moved to São Paulo in 1951. Performed temporary work at the Brazilian Engineering Company (EBE) which nurtured his interest in mathematics and resonated with his future as a sculptor of colossal works. An illustrator of São Paulo’s Post Office from 1953 to 1957, he devoted himself hard to woodcutting, works he exhibited individually at the Artist’s Clubinho, under artist Flávio de Carvalho’s guidance, and in 1957, at São Paulo’s Museum of Modern Art. He exhibited a collection of prints of a constructive geometric nature which he believed to have been fundamental for French government’s granting him a scholarship that same year. Studied Lithography at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts and attended John Friedlaender’s workshop, working with Metal Engraving, technique that led him to develop a language of utmost interest, particularly in the so-called “Paris School. A stubborn researcher, early in the 1960 he took on magnet-driven and electromagnet-driven objects’ projects, since Mr. Esmeraldo no longer desired to be a 24/7 engraver, as he would later state in interviews. The arrival of the series “Les Excitables” placed him in a most significant place in the international kinetic scene, due to his original works that employed static electricity. In 1977 he started moving back to Ceará, as he liked to say, working on public art projects that included monumental sculptures in urban landscapes of Fortaleza, where he settled in the late 1970s. It houses today some forty works of his own. He was both creator and curator of the International Exhibition of Ephemeral Sculptures (Fortaleza, 1986 and 1991). With several exhibitions held and being involved in important halls, biennials and other collective exhibitions in Europe and the Americas (Realités Nouvelles, Salon de Mai, Paris Biennale, Milan Triennale, São Paulo International Biennial, among others), his work can be seen at important museums and in public and private collections in Brazil and abroad. In 2011, the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo organized an important retrospective of the artist’s work, followed by other no lesser important exhibitions. An honored artist of public support agencies CNI SESI SENAI’s 6th Edition of Marcantoniuo Vilaça’s Award for Plastic Arts in 2017-2018, his work was exhibited in five different Brazilian state capitals and the Federal District. In recognition of his great legacy, the State Government of Ceará passed a law in 2019, at his would-have-been 90th birthday, instituting 2019 as The Sérvulo Esmeraldo Cultural Year.
Exposición. 13 dic de 2024 - 04 may de 2025 / CAAC - Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo / Sevilla, España
Formación. 01 oct de 2024 - 04 abr de 2025 / PHotoEspaña / Madrid, España
