Angelo de Aquino (Belo Horizonte MG 1945 - Rio de Janeiro 2007)
Pintor and designer.
Angelo Rodrigo de Aquino moves to Rio de Janeiro around 1960. In the 1960s, he began artistic training in the studio of painter and sculptor Roberto Moriconi (1932 - 1993), and lives with artists Rubens Gerchman (1942 - 2008), Roberto Magalhães (1940) and Antonio Dias (1944). In 1965, he is one of the organizers of the Proposals 65 event, at Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado - FAAP, São Paulo. As an illustrator and writer, he collaborates in the magazine Cadernos Brasileiros. From the end of the 1960s to the mid-1970s, it produces conceptual works, and passes after the abstract-geometric painting. In 1970, residing in Milan, he began editing small vanguard publications. Back in Brazil, he works in video and films by an artist, of which he is considered one of the forerunners in the country. He organizes, with Walter Zanini, the Prospective Exhibition 74, at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo - MAC/USP. In the early 1980s, he began to dedicate himself to figurative painting. In 1984, he created the character Cão Rex, constantly resumed in his production. He holds an exhibition commemorating the 10th anniversary of this character, in 1994, at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil do Rio de Janeiro - CCBB/RJ, entitled Rez Faz Do Dec. In 1997, he published Vida Rex, reissued in 2004, when Aquino Celebrates 40 years of painting, with exhibition at Casa França-Brasil, in Rio de Janeiro.
Critical Comment
Angelo de Aquino's production in the 1960s is linked to urban themes and mass culture and presents a range vibrant chromatic. In the 1970s, it is linked to conceptual art and later to geometric abstraction.
In the 1980s, his works maintain a dialogue with pop art. Creates the character Rex, a dog that starts to represent in a large series of paintings. In the opinion of some critics, his works maintain a connection with the universe of comic books and also with the work of the American artist Keith Haring (1958-1990). Regarding the Rex series, it can be noted that, in the first works, the treatment given by the artist is purely graphic. Later, in addition to the explosive use of color, it works on the surface of the canvas using transparencies, revealing luminosity and gestural brushstrokes. In Rex visits Vygian Aguilar (1985), he refers to the production of José Roberto Aguilar (1941), using contrasting tones, graphics and gesturality, thus creating a vibrant surface, in which some words are inserted.
As the critic Roberto Pontual notes, the work of Angelo de Aquino was marked from the beginning with the concern in the absorption of the most different contemporary languages, using different techniques such as drawing, painting, postal art and video.
Critiques
"This is how Angelo de Aquino has been showing a new motivation in the painting of Brazil, in simultaneous exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro, in Paris at FIAC 86 and at the 1900-2000 gallery. Exhibitions that have a special value when revealing a tropical panorama that breathes Purifying oxygenation. Not even a dirt atom seems to exist in its paintings and in its palette. Frames that seem freshly washed. Its planes fly in a space without pollution, its mountains resemble pyramids that form like sand cones clear, petrified in a crystal air. Imagining landscapes and composing his paintings through schemes from different horizons, reality plays an important role as it announces the artist's ghosts. The studio, the travels, characters and dogs come together launched in a contemporary way, seeking a maturity in the creation of the artist. Due to his youth and his culture, we find ourselves, then, in front of a dynamic artist who cannot avoid idealizing his paintings, but in a simple way, created almost like childhood drawings. All of his paintings are painted in acrylic on canvas. Dogs with hanging tongues and white teeth do not frighten us; They make us smile naturally because we see that there are still artists who paint for love. They cheer us up with a fresh painting like a vase of newly harvested flowers, spring colors that aspire to a fresh air".
Isaac Ortizar
São Paulo - Rio - Paris. Presentation by Marie-Odile Briot. Texts by Isaac Ortizar et al. São Paulo: Montesanti Galleria, 1987. P. [6]
"Here is a little bit of the history of Rex's ten years of resistance. Emblematic, the dog created in 1984 by the artist Angelo de Aquino systematically appears in his work since then, almost as a signature. A dog that "speaks" for its creator and that seems, at every moment, to jump from these pictures to life. Before Rex, the restless Aquino went through the usual experiences that marked the rupture with the art of the past. In fact, breaking with everything was one of the flags of the Opinion 65 show, where he emerged alongside the greatest talents of his generation. The conceptualism came later. And then, still, the geometric art. Always, and in everything, an anarchic trend, brand and engine of its trajectory".
AQUINO, Angelo De. Rex makes ten: paintings 84/94. Rio de Janeiro: Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, 1994. p. [3]
"I've known Angelo de Aquino for about twenty-five years. Throughout this period I was able to gather a set of works representing its trajectory. First were the conceptual works so in vogue in the 70s, in which the artist revealed his intelligence and his irony in the face of the problems of art. As time passed, his restless temperament and his extraordinary talent as a colorist led him to painting. In this technique Angelo found the means to establish himself as one of the most brilliant contemporary Brazilian artists. In a city that possesses so many visual icons, Angelo populates our retinas and our fantasies with a generous and exuberant, festive and community painting, in which Rex walks like a cartoon from Rio de Janeiro to look at life with sarcasm and enchantment".
Gilberto Chateaubriand
Aquino, Angelo De. The artist and the collector: Angelo de Aquino in the Gilberto Chateaubriand Rio de Janeiro Collection: National Museum of Fine Arts, 1995. p. [2].
Individual exhibitions
1966 - Belo Horizonte MG - Individual, at Galeria Guignard
1969 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at Petite Galerie
1970 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at Galeria Goeldi
1973 - Poznan (Poland) - Individual, at Galeria Akumulatory 2
1978 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at Petite Galerie
1978 - São Paulo SP - Individual, at the Global Gallery
1982 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the IBEU Gallery
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at Petite Galerie
1985 - São Paulo SP - Individual, in the Commercial Art Sub-district
1986 - Paris (France) - Individual, at the Sculpture Gallery
1987 - São Paulo SP - Individual, at the Montesanti Gallery
1987 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - individual, at Galeria Montesanti
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the Ipanema Art Gallery
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the GB Gallery 1989 - Paris (France) - Individual, Poche Gallery 1900-2000
1990 - Paris (France) - Individual, at Galeria Flak
1990 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the Ipanema Art Gallery
1992 - Paris (France) - Individual, at the Galerie 1900-2000
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the Ipanema Art Gallery
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Rex makes ten: 84/94, at CCBB
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The artist and the collector: Angelo de Aquino in the Gilberto Chateaubriand collection, at MNBA
1997 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Self-portraits 1983-1997, at the Casa de Cultura Laura Alvim
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Angelo de Aquino: two paintings, 1989-1998, at the Toulouse Gallery
1998 - Waltham (United States) - Individual, at The Bentley College Art Gallery
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Angelo de Aquino - 55, at Galeira GB
Exhibitions Collectives
1965 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st Esso Salon of Young Artists, at MAM/RJ
1965 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Opinion 65, at MAM/RJ
1965 - São Paulo SP - 1st Esso Salon of Young Artists, at MAC/USP
1965 - São Paulo SP - Proposals 65, at FAAP
1966 - Belo Horizonte MG - Brazilian vanguard, at UFMG
1966 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Opinion 66, at MAM/RJ
1966 - Salvador BA - 1st National Biennial of Plastic Arts
1968 - Curitiba PR - 25th Salão Paranaense de Belas Artes, at the Public Library of Paraná
1968 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 17th National Salon of Modern Art, at MAM/RJ
1968 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 8 artists, at Petite Galerie
1969 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Angelo de Aquino, Miguel Rio Branco and Lee Jaffe, at the Goeldi Gallery
1969 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Salão da Bússola, at MAM/RJ
1971 - Liege (Belgium) - Information, At Yellow Now Galerie
1972 - Brno (Czechoslovakia, current Czech Republic) - House of Art
1972 - Gottingen (Germany) - A. R. T. Gottingen Kunstkonkreb
1972 - Lausanne (Switzerland) - Attention, at Impact Gallery
1972 - Puerto Rico - 5 Brazilians, at the University of Puerto Rico
1972 - Poznan (Poland) - Net Show
1972 - São Paulo SP - 72nd Sesquicentennial Art Exhibition of Independence and Plastic Brazil, at the Biennial Foundation
1972 - Sydney (Australia) - Communication Trans/Art 3, at Inhibrodness Galerie
1972 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Group B
1973 - Budapest (Hungary) - Mirror, Balonttonboglar-Chapel
1973 - Reykjavik (Iceland) - A. R. T. , at Summ Gallery
1973 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Question about nature, function and necessity of the artwork, at the Art Gallery Ibeu
1973 - São Paulo SP - 6 conceptual artists, at MAC/USP
1974 - Maastrich (Holland) - Art and Ideology in Latin America, at Agora Studio
1974 - São Paulo SP - 8th Young Contemporary Art, at MAC/USP
1974 - São Paulo SP - Prospectiva 74, at MAC/USP
1976 - Kyoto (Japan) - 18 Latin American Artists, at Gallery Art Core
1976 - São Paulo SP - 2nd Multimedia, at MAC/USP
1976 - São Paulo SP - The Seventies, MAM/SP
1977 - São Paulo SP - Mostra, at MAC/USP
1979 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 2nd National Salon of Visual Arts, at MAM/RJ 
1981 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - From modern to contemporary: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, at MAM/RJ 
1982 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Brazil 60 years of modern art: Gilberto Chateaubriand modern art center Azeredo Perdigão
1982 - Lisbon (Portugal) - From the modern to the contemporary: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, at the José de Azeredo Perdigão Modern Art Center
1982 - London (England) - Brazil 60 years of modern art: Gilberto Chateaubriand collection, at Barbican Art Gallery
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Long live the painting, at Petite Galerie
1984 - São Paulo SP - Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection: portrait and self-portrait in Brazilian art, at MAM/SP
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Opinion 65 - 20 years, at Galeria Banerj
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Old Mania: Brazilian Drawing, at EAV/Parque Lage
1986 - Paris (France) - Los Americanos, at Galeria Arteurial
1986 - Paris (France) - Mostra, at FIAC 86 and Galerie 1900-2000
1987 - Paris (France) - São Paulo - Rio - Paris, at the Galerie 1900-2000
1987 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - to the collector: Homage to Gilberto Chateaubriand , at MAM/RJ
1987 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - São Paulo - Rio - Paris, at Montesanti Galleria
1987 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - hallucinated gesture, at Rio Design Center
1987 - São Paulo SP - hallucinated gesture, at MIS/SP
1987 - São Paulo SP - São Paulo - Rio - Paris, at Montesanti Roesler Gallery
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Hedonism Gilberto Chateaubriand, at the Gilberto Chateaubriand Building Gallery
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The eternal is ephemeral, at Petite Galerie
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Bridge to the XXI, at the Rio Design Center
1989 - Cannes (France) - 1er Bienalle Internationale de la Jeune Peinture Humor et Revolution
1989 - Girone (Spain) - 1er Bienalle Internationale de la Jeune Peinture Humor et Revolution
1989 - Freiburg (Germany) - Viva Brasil, at Ruta Correa Gallery
1989 - Nice (France) - Art Jonction Internationale, At Galerie 1900-2000
1989 - Paris (France) - Viva Brasil, at Galerie 1900-2000
1989 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Caminhos, in Rio Design Center
1990 - Freiburg (Germany) - Aspekte Latein Amerikanische Künster in Paris, at Ruta Correa Gallery
1990 - Nice (France) - Art Jonction Internationale, Artension Magazine
1991 - Doterhausen (Germany) - Aspekte Latein Amerikanische, at Worforum
1991 - Freiburg (Germany) - Frankfurt, at Ruta Gallery
1991 - Paris (France) - 6 Latin American artists at the Galerie 1900-2000
1991 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Gilberto Collection Chateaubriand, at MAM/RJ
1992 - Paris (France) - Diversité Latino-Americaine, at Galerie 1900-2000
1992 - Paris (France) - Tapis d'artistes, at the Galerie 1900-2000
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Eco-Art, at MAM/RJ
1993 - Maubeuge (France) - 1st Trienalle das Ameriques
1993 - Paris (France) - Natures Mortes, at Galerie Gloria Cohen
1993 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st on the way to Niterói - João Sattamini Collection, in Paço Imperial
1993 - São Paulo SP - The modern design in Brazil: Gilberto Chateaubriand MAM/RJ Collection, at the SESI Art Gallery
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The modern design in Brazil: Gilberto Chateubriand Art Gallery mam/rj
1994 - São Paulo SP - Bienal Brasil Século 20th, at the Bienal Foundation
1995 - Porto Alegre RS - Angelo de Aquino and Rubens Gerchman, at the Porto Alegre Art Scholarship
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Angelo de Aquino and Rubens Gerchman, at Espaço 999
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - da Cor do Rio, at the Espaço Cultural dos Correios  
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Opinion 65: 30 years, at CCBB
1996 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Petite Galerie: a vision of Brazilian art, in the Imperial Palace
1997 - Paris (France) - L'Histoire D'en Face, at Galerie 1900-2000
1997 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Air: Exhibition of plastic arts, toys, objects and models, at the Imperial Palace
1998 - São Paulo SP - O Moderno and the contemporary in Brazilian art: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection - MAM/RJ, at MASP
1999 - São Paulo SP - 5th United Artist - Identity Travel, at Casa das Rosas
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Situations: Brazilian Arts 70s, at Fundação Casa França-Brasil
2000 - São Paulo SP - Conceptual Art and Conceptualisms: 70's in the MAC/USP collection, at the SESI Art Gallery
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Art in Campo, at the Cultural Center of Federal Justice
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Caminhos do Contemporânea 1952-2002, at Paço Imperial
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Art in Motion, in Espaço BNDES
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilianart project, at Almacén Art Gallery
2005 - São Paulo SP - The body in Brazilian contemporary art, at Itaú Cultural
Source: Itaú cultural
