Alfredo Ceschiatti (Belo Horizonte MG 1918 - Rio de Janeiro RJ 1989)
Sculptor, draftsman, teacher.
In 1938, he traveled to Italy, where he was drawn above all to the works of Renaissance artists. In 1940, in Rio de Janeiro, he entered the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes - Enba, where he studied sculpture with Corrêa Lima (1878 - 1974). He frequented the studio set up in the Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, together with Bruno Giorgi (1905 - 1993) and José Pedrosa (1915 - 2002). In 1944, commissioned by Oscar Niemeyer (1907 - 2012), he created the bas-relief for the Church of São Francisco de Assis in Pampulha, Belo Horizonte. The following year, this work won him the foreign travel prize at the 51st Salão Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro. Between 1946 and 1948, he stayed in Europe and became acquainted with the work of Max Bill (1908 - 1994), Henri Laurens (1885 - 1954), Giacomo Manzù (1908 - 1991) and, above all, Aristide Maillol (1861 - 1944). His first solo exhibition was held at the headquarters of the Instituto dos Arquitetos do Brasil - IAB, in Rio de Janeiro, in 1948. In 1956, he was part of the winning team in the design competition for the Monument to the Dead of World War II in Rio de Janeiro. In the early 1960s, he taught sculpture and drawing at the Universidade de Brasília - UnB. Many of his works are in public spaces and buildings, including the Palácio da Alvorada, the Praça dos Três Poderes and the Palácio dos Arcos in Brasília; the Memorial da América Latina and the Praça da Sé in São Paulo; and the Brazilian Embassy in Moscow.
Critical Commentary
Alfredo Ceschiatti's sculptures stand in important public spaces in Brasília, such as As Duas Irmãs [The Two Sisters] (1966), at the Palácio dos Arcos, and Os Anjos [The Angels] (1970) and Os Evangelistas [The Evangelists] (1968), at the Brasília Cathedral. The sculptor makes extensive use of the female figure, depicted in his works with curvilinear, pure, rounded forms, counterbalanced by the movement of the drapery.
Ceschiatti develops his sculptures through a sensitive line, as art critic Sheila Leirner points out, giving balance and lightness to works such as the Angels of the Brasília Cathedral or O Contorcionista [The Contortionist] (1952). The artist, who is deeply interested in the Baroque of Minas Gerais, takes up elements of that tradition in many of his works, combining them with greater formal simplification.
Critiques
"In his figurative works as well as in the abstract or semi-abstract ones (...) Ceschiatti captures and immortalizes - through an extremely personal vision - moments of high poetry, tension and strong plastic connotation, in which a rhythmic pulse always remains latent. His sculptures are striking for the dignity and nobility with which they rise from their pedestals or hang suspended from the ceiling - static, yet full of this inner movement - to embody woman, intensely dramatic biblical figures and scenes, saints, angels, animals, dancers, acrobats, imposing historical or legendary figures. These bodies have their own organization, in which the arrangement of volumes, the play of limbs and the perfect proportion between the parts produce a most balanced and personal effect, the inevitable result of intuition and aesthetic sensitivity combined with excellent technique. (...) Following the basic principle of sculpture, as Brecheret stated and practiced it, Ceschiatti carries his volumes through in a single sweep, without interruption in the line that contours them, imbuing his forms in bronze and stone - materials he handles masterfully - with sensuality, poetry and musicality. Female forms exert an undeniable archetypal fascination on the sculptor. His women are round and shapely, sensual and lascivious, strong, and at the same time gentle and fragile. (...) Ceschiatti is, above all, a draftsman of sculpture. His works are born and develop through a sensitive line, at times Picassian, which gives them lightness, harmony and, above all, clarity in the plastic formalization of their themes. He achieves a quality rare among today's sculptors: an appropriate and deep assimilation of the classical artists, particularly in the humanistic quality that characterizes his works".
Sheila Leirner
Março/1976
CESCHIATTI, Alfredo. Ceschiatti. São Paulo: MAM, 1976. pp. [4-5].
"(...) Within the properties of sculpture, he has known how to compose the planes and counter-planes of vision, organize the gravitation of masses around centers of attraction, and form the horizon proper to each formal manifestation; in short, through the expression of a beautiful form, he has achieved its best immersion in space. His sculpture is free, strong and wholesome, like that of the most brilliant periods of this art; in it there are no dark, impenetrable corners, no evasions or betrayals in its content; in its volumes and reliefs, the insane mysteries of eroticism or hallucination find no place".
Joaquim Cardozo
1956
CESCHIATTI, Alfredo. Ceschiatti. São Paulo: MAM, 1976. p. [14].
"He is certainly not an artist of powerful imagination. His personality is that of a formalist. Do not take this as a criticism, for it is an observation about the artist's system, and such literalness is not unusual in the history of the visual arts.
However, in perceiving plastic form itself, in conceiving the piece as such, the sculptor Ceschiatti has been timid and has kept to classical models. He moves from the Greeks to the Renaissance with the same serene belief that 'on these paths the artist is safe'. Looking at his work as a whole, it is easier to understand the official preference his sculpture has enjoyed.
Yet this official taste (including that of the architect Oscar Niemeyer) may have deprived us of an artist capable of greater daring and, possibly, of a sculptor of more innovative forms. Ceschiatti's potential and technical assurance seemed to me to call for moments of greater flight and renewal.
Some of his works, especially the smaller pieces and the series of 'acrobats', suggest an artist with enough substance to be a striking figure in Brazil. And Ceschiatti did not achieve this. It is remarkable that an artist with his opportunities, his evident assurance and his connection with and respect for modern architecture should have limited himself to producing only his own work, without influencing new generations".
Jacob Klintowitz
KLINTOWITZ, Jacob. Versus: dez anos de crítica de arte. São Paulo: André Galeria de Arte, 1978. p. 24.
Testimonials
"Like two good friends, we go walking through life. I, absorbed in Architecture, inventing forms, playing with reinforced concrete; he, our Ceschiatti, making his sculptures. Those beautiful, baroque, curvaceous women his talent creates in marble. How I love to see them! To feel, after so many years, that our friend has not changed, that he has not taken other people's paths, remaining authentic, modest, irreproachable. I have no prejudices. I accept everything that seems good and true to me. And that is why I like Ceschiatti's sculpture, a necessary pause in this exhibitionist frenzy that so often compromises and vulgarizes contemporary art".
Oscar Niemeyer
CESCHIATTI, Alfredo. Ceschiatti. São Paulo: MAM, 1976. p. [2].
Solo Exhibitions
1948 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - First solo exhibition, at IAB/RJ
1956 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, in the gardens of Oscar Niemeyer's residence
1976 - São Paulo SP - Alfredo Ceschiatti: Retrospective, at MAM/SP
1981 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Alfredo Ceschiatti: Sculpture, at AM Niemeyer Art Interiores
Group Exhibitions
1943 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 49th National Salon of Fine Arts. Modern Division, at MNBA - bronze medal
1944 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 50th National Salon of Fine Arts. Modern Division, at MNBA - silver medal
1945 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 51st National Salon of Fine Arts. Modern Division, at MNBA - silver medal and foreign travel prize
1946 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Painters Go to the People's School, at Diretório Acadêmico da Enba
1952 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Exhibition of Brazilian Artists, at MAM/RJ
1953 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 2nd National Salon of Modern Art, at MNBA
1953 - São Paulo SP - 2nd Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Pavilhão dos Estados
1955 - São Paulo SP - 3rd Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Pavilhão das Nações
1964 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Nude in Contemporary Art, at Galeria Ibeu Copacabana
1972 - São Paulo SP - 4th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1975 - São Paulo SP - 7th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1978 - Penápolis SP - 3rd Noroeste Visual Arts Salon, at Fundação Educacional de Penápolis
1982 - São Paulo SP - A Century of Sculpture in Brazil, at Masp
1983 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 6th National Visual Arts Salon, at MAM/RJ
1984 - São Paulo SP - Tradition and Rupture: A Synthesis of Brazilian Art and Culture, at Fundação Bienal
1986 - Brasília DF - Brasília: An Open Trail, at Fundação Cultural do Distrito Federal
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - A Nova Flor de Abacate, Grupo Guignard-1943 and Os Dissidentes-1942, at Galeria de Arte Banerj
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Seven Decades of Italian Presence in Brazilian Art, at Paço Imperial
Posthumous Exhibitions
1990 - Brasília DF - Brasília, 30 Years, at Performance Galeria
1990 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Skultura Galeria de Arte
1993 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Erotic Art, at MAM/RJ
1994 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Ricardo Camargo e Ugo di Pace Studio de Arte
1997 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Sculpture: Profile of an Identity, at Banco Safra
1997 - São Paulo SP - Three-Dimensionality in 20th-Century Brazilian Art, at Itaú Cultural
1997 - Washington (United States) - Brazilian Sculpture: Profile of an Identity, at Centro Cultural do BID
1998 - Belo Horizonte MG - Three-Dimensionality in 20th-Century Brazilian Art, at Itaú Cultural
1998 - Brasília DF - Three-Dimensionality in 20th-Century Brazilian Art, at Galeria Itaú Cultural
1998 - Penápolis SP - Three-Dimensionality in 20th-Century Brazilian Art, at Galeria Itaú Cultural
1998 - São Paulo SP - The Art of Exhibiting Art, at MAM/SP
1999 - São Paulo SP - The Female Figure in the MAB Collection, at MAB/Faap
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - When Brazil Was Modern: Visual Arts in Rio de Janeiro from 1905 to 1960, at Paço Imperial
2000 - São Paulo SP - The Female Figure in the MAB Collection, at MAB/Faap
2000 - São Paulo SP - The Human Figure in the Itaú Collection, at Itaú Cultural
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Sculpture: From the Pinacoteca to the Jardim da Luz, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2000 - São Paulo SP - The Angels Are Back, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2001 - São Paulo SP - Aldo Franco Collection, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2002 - Brasília DF - JK - An Aesthetic Adventure, at Conjunto Cultural da Caixa
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Art in the Fadel Collection: From the Restlessness of the Modern to the Autonomy of Language, at CCBB
2002 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Art in the Fadel Collection: From the Restlessness of the Modern to the Autonomy of Language, at CCBB
2003 - Brasília DF - Brazilian Art in the Fadel Collection: From the Restlessness of the Modern to the Autonomy of Language, at CCBB
2003 - São Paulo SP - Sculptors - Sculptures, at Pinakotheke
2004 - Belo Horizonte MG - Pampulha, Collected Work: 1943-2003, at MAP
2004 - São Paulo SP - The Price of Seduction: From Corset to Silicone, at Itaú Cultural
Source: Itaú Cultural
