Dionísio del Santo (Colatina ES 1925 - Vitória ES 1999)
Dionísio del Santo was a painter, draftsman, printmaker and screen printer. He studied at the Seminário São Francisco de Assis, in Santa Teresa, Espírito Santo, between 1932 and 1939. In the early 1940s, he made his first drawings. In 1946, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he began his career in painting. In Rio he attended life drawing and color theory classes at the Associação Brasileira de Desenho (ABD) and also worked in advertising and the graphic arts.
From 1952, he began working with woodcut and screen printing, a technique in which he developed a significant body of work. From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, his work drew close to the principles of the concrete movement, although he kept away from the debates between concrete and neo-concrete artists. Between 1964 and 1966, he produced gouaches combining geometric and figurative elements.
He held his first solo exhibition in 1965, at Galeria Relevo, in Rio de Janeiro. From the mid-1960s, he devoted himself to abstract art, focusing mainly on screen prints. In 1967, he received the acquisition prize at the 9th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo. In the 1970s, he stood out with the series Cordéis [Cords], in which the influence of kinetic art is noticeable. In 1975, he was awarded the prize for Best Printmaking Exhibition of the Year by the Associação Paulista dos Críticos de Arte (APCA).
In 1989 and 1990, he had retrospectives at the Paço Imperial, in Rio de Janeiro, and at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM/SP). In 1998, another retrospective was held at the Museu de Arte do Espírito Santo (Maes), which today houses more than 70 works by the artist, including screen prints and woodcuts.
Critical Commentary
Dionísio del Santo's work lies between geometry and figuration. In the early 1950s, he makes figurative woodcuts recalling the artist's rural origins. His paintings begin to show greater formal simplification and an interest in geometry. From this phase come canvases in red, white and black, or in white alone, in which he builds pictorial space with just a few lines.
In screen prints from the late 1950s and early 1960s, he creates geometric forms by means of lines running across the whole printed surface, exploring the contrast between full and empty, or positive and negative. From these purely linear compositions, as the art critic Reynaldo Roels Jr. notes, different versions begin to emerge, in which the treatment of the lines or the play of color is altered. The artist reworks the same formal structures many times, varying the techniques used, such as drawing, painting or painted relief. In some works of the 1970s, he inserts ropes or cords into the surface of the composition. These works, which lie between relief and painting, are an important point in his research related to kinetic art, revealing an affinity with the production of the Venezuelan artists Jesús Rafael Soto and Cruz-Diez.
His activity in screen printing is so special, as Roels notes, that it deserves particular emphasis in his career. The artist explores the technique with great refinement and also uses it as an experimental field for his work. He teaches several courses promoting the use of screen printing, at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro - MAM/RJ and the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage - EAV/Parque Lage. In the 1990s, Del Santo begins working with more complex forms and an intense use of color.
Critiques
"Dionísio Del Santo (...) drew close to Concretism in the 1960s. Almost like a puzzle, he assembles fanciful worlds using geometric forms precisely distributed in space. Merging with them are balanced doses of contrasting color. However, it was above all through exhaustive work in screen printing, explored in its intrinsic possibilities, that Del Santo has achieved recognition for his work".
Walter Zanini
ZANINI, Walter, org. História geral da arte no Brasil. Apresentação de Walther Moreira Salles. São Paulo: Instituto Walther Moreira Salles, Fundação Djalma Guimarães, 1983.
Solo Exhibitions
1965 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Galeria Relevo
1973 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at MAM/RJ
1974 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Bolsa de Arte
1976 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at MNBA
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Petite Galerie
1987 - São Paulo SP - Retrospective, at Galeria Paulo Figueiredo
1988 - Curitiba PR - Solo, at Documenta Galeria de Arte
1989 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Retrospective, at Paço Imperial
1990 - São Paulo SP - Retrospective, at MAM/SP
1998 - Vitória ES - Retrospective, at Museu de Arte do Espírito Santo
Group Exhibitions
1965 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st Esso Salon of Young Artists, at MAM/RJ
1965 - São Paulo SP - 1st Esso Salon of Young Artists, at MAC/USP
1966 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Opinião 66, at MAM/RJ
1967 - São Paulo SP - 9th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal - Itamaraty Acquisition Prize
1968 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 17th National Salon of Modern Art, at MAM/RJ - Jury Exemption Prize
1972 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st Screen Printing Show, at MNBA
1973 - Belo Horizonte MG - 5th Belo Horizonte Art Salon - acquisition prize
1977 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Constructive Project in Art, at MAM/RJ
1977 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Constructive Project in Art: 1950-1962, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1980 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Show, at Galeria Saramenha
1981 - Belo Horizonte MG - Hilton Printmaking Highlights, at Palácio das Artes
1981 - Brasília DF - Hilton Printmaking Highlights, at ECT Galeria de Arte
1981 - Curitiba PR - Hilton Printmaking Highlights, at Casa da Gravura Solar do Barão
1981 - Florianópolis SC - Hilton Printmaking Highlights, at Museu de Arte de Santa Catarina
1981 - Porto Alegre RS - Hilton Printmaking Highlights, at Margs
1981 - Recife PE - Hilton Printmaking Highlights, at MAM/PE
1981 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Hilton Printmaking Highlights, at MAM/RJ
1981 - Salvador BA - Hilton Printmaking Highlights, at Teatro Castro Alves
1981 - São Paulo SP - Hilton Printmaking Highlights, at MAM/SP
1982 - Penápolis SP - 5th Noroeste Visual Arts Salon, at Fundação Educacional de Penápolis. Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Penápolis
1984 - Curitiba PR - 6th Curitiba City Printmaking Show. Woodcut in the History of Brazilian Art, at Casa Romário Martins
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Woodcut in the History of Brazilian Art, at Funarte. Galeria Sérgio Milliet
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Recent Donations 82-84, at MNBA
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Active Brazilian Painting, at Espaço Petrobras
1984 - São Paulo SP - Tradition and Rupture: A Synthesis of Brazilian Art and Culture, at Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st Christian Dior Contemporary Art Show: Painting, at Paço Imperial
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Seven Decades of Italian Presence in Brazilian Art, at Paço Imperial
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Geometric Abstraction 2, at Funarte. Centro de Artes
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Eternal Is Ephemeral, at Petite Galerie
1989 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Geometry without Manifesto, at Gabinete de Arte Cleide Wanderley
1989 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Printmaking: 4 Themes, at EAV/Parque Lage
1989 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Rio Today, at MAM/RJ
1992 - Curitiba PR - 10th Curitiba City Printmaking Show/Mostra América, at Museu da Gravura
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - On the Way to Niterói: João Sattamini Collection, at Paço Imperial
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Art Printmaking in Brazil: A Proposal for a Mapping, at CCBB
1993 - João Pessoa PB - Woodcut: From Cordel to the Gallery, at Fundação Espaço Cultural da Paraíba
1993 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Emblems of the Body: The Nude in Brazilian Modern Art, at CCBB
1994 - São Paulo SP - Bienal Brasil Século XX, at Fundação Bienal
1994 - São Paulo SP - Poetics of Resistance: Aspects of Brazilian Printmaking, at Galeria de Arte do Sesi
1994 - São Paulo SP - Woodcut: From Cordel to the Gallery, at Companhia do Metropolitano de São Paulo
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Graphic Image, at Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Graphic Image, at Galeria Cândido Portinari
1996 - Petrópolis RJ - 1st Sesc Printmaking Salon. Dionísio Del Santo, at Sesc
1996 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 4 Masters of Brazilian Printmaking, at Sesc Copacabana
1997 - Barra Mansa RJ - Contemporary Strokes: Homage to Brazilian Printmaking, at Centro Universitário de Barra Mansa
1997 - Porto Alegre RS - Exhibition of the Caixa Collection, at Conjunto Cultural da Caixa
1997 - Porto Alegre RS - Parallel Exhibition, at Museu da Caixa Econômica Federal
1997 - São Paulo SP - Exhibition of the Caixa Collection, at Conjunto Cultural da Caixa
1998 - Curitiba PR - Exhibition of the Caixa Collection, at Conjunto Cultural da Caixa
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Exhibition of the Caixa Collection, at Conjunto Cultural da Caixa
1998 - São Paulo SP - Constructive Art in Brazil: Adolpho Leirner Collection, at Museu de Arte Moderna
1998 - São Paulo SP - The Modern and the Contemporary in Brazilian Art: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection - MAM/RJ, at Masp
1998 - São Paulo SP - The Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo - Banco Safra
1998 - São Paulo SP - The Collectors - Guita and José Mindlin: Matrices and Prints, at Galeria de Arte do Sesi
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Constructive Art in Brazil: Adolpho Leirner Collection, at MAM/RJ
Posthumous Exhibitions
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Mostra Rio Gravura. Brazilian Modern Printmaking: Museu Nacional de Belas Artes Collection, at Mnba
1999 - Salvador BA - 60 Years of Brazilian Art, at Espaço Cultural da Caixa Econômica Federal
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Paths of the Contemporary 1952-2002, at Paço Imperial
2002 - Niterói RJ - Sattamini Collection: Modern and Contemporary, at MAC/Niterói
2002 - São Paulo SP - Map of Now: Recent Brazilian Art in the João Sattamini Collection of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake
2002 - Niterói RJ - Collection on Paper, at MAC/Niterói
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Caixa Treasures: Brazilian Modern Art in the Caixa Collection, at Conjunto Cultural da Caixa
Source: Itaú Cultural
