Amadeo Lorenzato (Belo Horizonte, MG, 1900 - idem, 1995)
Amadeo Lorenzato was a painter and sculptor. He began his career as a painter's assistant in 1910, working in that role until 1920, when he moved with his family to Arsiero, Italy, where he worked as a house painter on the city's reconstruction. In 1925, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Arts in Vicenza. The following year, he moved to Rome, where he spent two years alongside the Dutch painter and poster artist Cornelius Keesman, with whom he often drew on weekends. In 1928, they both decided to travel by bicycle through Eastern Europe, passing through Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey. At the end of the trip, in 1930, he separated from Cornelius and moved to Paris, where he worked assembling the pavilions for the International Colonial Exposition. The following year, he returned to Italy, where he remained until April 1948, when he returned to Brazil.
In 1949, he worked assembling the booths for the Industrial and Commercial Exposition, held at the Hotel Quitandinha in Petrópolis. He then moved with his family to Belo Horizonte, where he worked as a house painter until 1956. Unable to continue working in construction due to an accident, he devoted himself full-time to painting. In the mid-1960s, he presented some works to the critic Sérgio Maldonado, who introduced him to Palhano Júnior, who organized his first solo exhibition, held in 1967.
Critical Commentary
Born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, of Italian descent, Lorenzato spent his childhood in Brazil. After World War I (1914-1918), his family decided to return to Italy. At the age of 20, he began working as a construction painter. In 1925, he studied at the Royal Academy of Arts, in the Galleria Olimpica di Vicenza (now the Accademia Olimpica Vicenza). His first paintings were created on Sunday excursions around the city.
In 1926, in Rome, he met the painter Cornelius Keissman. Around 1928, accompanied by Keissman, he embarked on a long bicycle trip through several European countries. He made his living selling small gouaches and watercolors and printed cards with photos of the two artists next to their bicycles. They remained in Brussels and Paris for longer periods. In Paris, Lorenzato befriended the Italian painter Gino Severini (1883-1966) and took the opportunity to expand his knowledge of the work of the Impressionists, for whom he expressed deep admiration. He also claimed to be deeply fascinated by the works of the Italian Renaissance masters.
With the end of World War II (1939-1945), he returned to Brazil in 1949 and settled with his family in Belo Horizonte. He suffered an accident in 1956, resulting in his retirement. He then devoted himself entirely to painting. For scholar Cláudia Giannetti Nölle, in his paintings, the artist dispensed with details and focused on essential lines and colors, a practice common in painters close to primitivism. He began using a metal comb, commonly used for ornamental wall paintings, with which he blended the layers of paint onto the canvas. The result is a presentation of tortuous lines and slight indentations scattered throughout the painting.
Lorenzato draws his subjects from everyday reality, both in landscapes and still lifes and portraits. He frequently uses new materials such as wire mesh, wood, and cardboard, as well as plates, boxes, and lampshades that serve as supports for his paintings. He also creates sculptures, working with clay and, in larger works, with cement. In sculpture, he tends to reduce to basic forms and essential lines, although he imbues the figures with great intensity and expressive power. For Nölle, his work is above all a spontaneous creation, in which the elements merge naturally.
Collections
Clóvis Salgado Foundation - Belo Horizonte, MG
Pampulha Art Museum - MAP - Belo Horizonte, MG
Reviews
"(...) The arrangement of elements and colors achieves a balance that energizes his contemplative and static representations. He also manages to infuse vigor into the often geometric abstractions of the elements that compose the painting through the use of a technical resource he developed. The result is brief waves of tortuous lines etched in paint, not very prominent eminences and depressions that are dispersed throughout the painting, becoming more intense especially in the elements that serve as backgrounds (walls, skies, mountains). This comb, the only example acquired in Paris, was previously used in the ornamentation of wainscoting that imitated marble or wood, very fashionable until the middle of the century, especially in the design of veins and ribs. (...) His themes are taken directly from everyday reality. Continually seeking new materials, he has worked with wire mesh, wood, and cardboard."
Cláudia Giannetti Nolle
LORENZATO. Lorenzato: 90 years old. Belo Horizonte: Manoel Macedo Art Gallery, 1990.
"For a long time, Amadeu Luciano Lorenzato's work was associated with popular tradition. This was contributed to by the frequency with which the everyday landscape, the favelas, and the houses appear in his works. However, an analysis restricted to this first relationship would ignore what is most important about his painting.
If the artist chooses popular themes, it is to extract from them the forms, colors, and lights that synthesize the very essence of the work. His interest lies in reflecting on the means of painting itself, in constructing a language that relates above all to itself, and not to the representation of a specific theme. His goal is to construct forms and images that allow us to experience the world in a new way, different from that offered by pure and simple everyday life.
In this sense, his work dialogues with modern painting, reaffirming its condition of constructing meaning through visual language itself and allowing aesthetic experience beyond the literalness of the subject.
Lorenzato has always been unconcerned with norms or trends pre-established rules, which, incidentally, he knew well due to his long stay in Europe, having had contact with the entire artistic production of the continent, from the Renaissance to the first avant-garde movements of the 20th century.
As an artist eager to investigate his own work, he produced his paint, experimented with diverse supports and materials, creating textures with resources inherited from his former profession; sculptures and drawings on cement slabs; studies and sketches with papers that were at hand - exhibition invitations, his son's notebook, cigarette packs.
Janaina Alves Melo
MELO, Janaina Alves. Presentation. In: LORENZATO; SILVA, Fernando Pedro da (coord.); RIBEIRO, Marília Andrés (coord.). Lorenzato - Depoimento. Belo Horizonte: C/Arte, 2004. 96 p., ill. b&w. color. (Circuito Atelier, 8). p. [3-4].
Testimonial
How did the idea of using the comb to paint come about?
I was a painter, specializing in decorating with marbled wood, faux marble, and wood. I did the oil base, then the veins in yellow, red, and black, and then we finished them off with the comb. To create the wood grain, I bought a collection of decorator's combs in Paris. Then I returned to Belo Horizonte and no longer used them. One day I had the idea, lined some cardboard, and then started messing around with the comb, and something went wrong. That was about ten years ago. So I started. I had six combs, but I lost the others and only one remained, this one here, which I split in half because it was too wide. First, I paint, spreading the paint in different colors, and then I blend it with the comb. I use the brush to spread the paint and the comb to blend the colors.
What are your favorite motifs to paint?
I really like the sky, trees, and roads. I walked many kilometers along the roads, all over Tuscany and Austria; the roads were unpaved, and there were many fruit trees: cherry, pear, and apple trees.
What is art to you?
Well, for me, art is a pastime, it's a therapy that helps me live. When I'm painting, I forget everything. Something unusual even happened the other day: we were having a barbecue here, I bought a kilo and a half of sausage and put it on the fire to fry, and then I went to work downstairs, a sculpture, and I forgot everything. When I smelled something burning, I ran and it had turned into charcoal.
What style do you paint in?
I don't even know what style it is. It's painting! They say it's primitive, naive, surrealist, I don't know... I paint what I see, what interests me.
Text excerpted from the artist's statement, published in the book Lorenzato - Circuito Atelier, Editora C/Arte, Belo Horizonte, 2004. pp. 31 to 34.
Solo Exhibitions
1964 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Solo exhibition at Minas Tennis Club
1967 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Solo exhibition at Minas Tennis Club
1971 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Solo exhibition at Chez Bastião Gallery
1973 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Solo exhibition at Arte Livro Gallery
1976 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Solo exhibition at Guignard Gallery
1977 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Solo exhibition at Memória Cooperativa de Arte Gallery
1981 - São Paulo, SP - Solo exhibition at Brasiliana Gallery
1984 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Solo exhibition at Casa dos Contos
1986 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Solo exhibition at Espaço Asal
1988 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Solo exhibition at Manoel Macedo Art Gallery
1990 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Solo exhibition, at the Manoel Macedo Art Gallery
1991 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Solo exhibition, at Itaugaleria
1994 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Solo exhibition, at Galeria da Caixa
1995 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Solo exhibition, at MAP
Group Exhibitions
1965 - Belo Horizonte, MG - New Year's Eve, at Minas Tênis Clube
1965 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Young Salon, at Minas Tênis Clube
1970 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Five Primitives, at the Guignard Gallery
1970 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Group Exhibition, at the Minart Gallery
1970 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Folklore Week, at the Minart Gallery
1973 - Bratislava (Slovakia) - 3rd Bratislava Triennial
1976 - Belo Horizonte, MG - 1st Small Painting Salon, at the Guignard Gallery
1976 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Popular Artists at the 4th Brazilian Folklore Festival, at the Otto Cirne Gallery
1980 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Primitives of Minas Gerais, at the Mandala Art Gallery
1981 - Belo Horizonte, MG - 1st Exhibition of Popular Art and Crafts, at the Shopping Center
1982 - Bauru, SP - 1st National Exhibition of Popular Painting, at the Sesc Art Gallery
1984 - Belo Horizonte, MG - 1st Visual Arts Salon of the Clóvis Salgado Foundation, at the Clóvis Salgado Foundation. Palace of Arts
1985 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Lorenzato and Valentim Rosa, at the Palace of Arts Gallery
1988 - Rome (Italy) - Italy-Brazil Cultural Exchange
1992 - Belo Horizonte, MG - A. Poteiro, Lorenzato, Rodelnégio, at the Manoel Macedo Art Gallery
1994 - Belo Horizonte, MG - 5th Art Fair, at the Guignard Gallery
1994 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Great Brazilian Artists, at the Guignard Gallery
1994 - Ouro Preto, MG - Virtual Identity, Soapstone, at the Museum of Inconfidência
1994 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - MEC Popular Art Salon, at the MEC
1995 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Exhibition, at the MAP
Posthumous Exhibitions
1996 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Popular Artists of Belo Horizonte, at the UFMG Cultural Center
2001 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Solo, at the Guignard School
2001 - Belo Horizonte, MG - Lorenzatices, at the Pace Art Gallery