Elder Rocha Lima (Goiânia GO 1928)
Painter, draftsman, watercolorist, architect, art critic, graphic artist and teacher.
He graduated from the Faculdade Nacional de Arquitetura of the Universidade do Brasil, in Rio de Janeiro. He studied drawing and painting with Ubi Bava (1915 - 1988), Pedro Luiz Correia de Araújo (1874 - 1955) and Glênio Bianchetti (1928 - 2014). Alongside his work as an architect, he began painting, mainly everyday scenes with human figures and still lifes. Until 1970, he taught Brazilian art history at the Centro de Estudos Brasileiros of the Universidade Federal de Goiás - UFG, and drawing and art history at the Universidade Católica de Goiás - UCG, in Goiânia. With Frei Nazareno Confaloni (1917 - 1977), he created the Architecture and Urbanism course at UCG. He founded and ran Empresa Terracota Ltda., a manufacturer of art ceramics. He installed tile panels for TV Anhanguera and for the Sesc restaurant in Goiânia, and designed Portuguese mosaic sidewalks for the city government and decorated tiles for industrial production. He designed covers for books and various publications. In 1980, he worked as an art critic for Jornal de Brasília. In 1991, the Universidade Federal de Goiás, UFG, honored him with an exhibition at the MAC in Goiânia, showing works from his different phases, from paintings of his early career to experiments beyond the flat canvas, in which he works with roots, marbles and other objects. He currently teaches at UFG.
Critiques
"Anyone, complicated or presumably simple, an ordinary person or a scholar, who comes before the works of E. Rocha Lima will retain a single sensation of lightness and well-being, now of supreme reflection on the art of painting, now of genuine involvement in our everyday life. The simplest will feel rewarded by human art. Certain complicated types, without rethinking the forms, will show a certain disdain for what they may think of the almost academic lines, natural in the case of the still lifes, and of the figures, whose drawing is rarely violated. These same complicated individuals, at least through their own lens, will surely see traces of our Cézanne in the oranges and apples so livid, here in Elder so lightly alive, and will surely see magical details and subtleties stemming from a certain influence of the light of our Matisse, as if to regard E. Rocha Lima from Goiás as a good disciple of these sleepless wizards of the impressionist past. (...) We are before a renewer from the beginning to the present (...). E. Rocha Lima, if not alone, is a demolisher of the elitist worlds of easel art. Here is his painting, classical, which incorporates all the achievements of the modern (...)."
José Godoy Garcia
SILVEIRA, PX (org.), MACHADO, Betúlia (org.). Arte hoje: o processo em Goiás visto por dentro. Rio de Janeiro: Marco Zero, 1985. (MultiArte).
"There is a multiple variety of viewpoints adopted by Elder in his recording of space, associated with the elements that make up each composition. The variety of these viewpoints gives the whole a rhythm and dynamics of its own, inherent to a universe in constant change that does not escape the artist's attentive observation - the success of such a recording is not due only to the relationships that objects of great geometric simplicity establish among themselves; they are enriched by the chromatic vibrations Elder knows how to measure out, without lapsing into the decorative or resorting to the arbitrary."
Adelmo Café
CAFÉ, Adelmo. Vibrações Cromáticas. Jornal O Popular, Goiânia, 28 abr. 1991.
Testimonials
"From a technical point of view, three elements fascinate me and help me reach my goal - a rigorous composition, strong color and the achievement of material effects. Perhaps these are the only 'erudite' elements of my work as a painter... When I want to represent, or rather, when I want to interpret anything, I need to have an emotional relationship with that thing, be it a landscape, a human figure or a piece of fruit on a table. When I paint a Goiás landscape, I paint it because it is fixed in my memory in a very emotional form."
Elder Rocha Lima
LIMA, Elder Rocha. Jornal O Popular, Goiânia, 26 nov. 1989.
Solo Exhibitions
1983 - Goiânia GO - Solo, at Galeria Casa Grande
1985 - Brasília DF - Solo, at Performance Galeria de Arte
1985 - Goiânia GO - Solo, at Casa Grande Galeria de Arte
1987 - Goiânia GO - Solo, at Casa Grande Galeria de Arte
1989 - Goiânia GO - Solo, at Casa Grande Galeria de Arte
1991 - Goiânia GO - Solo, at MAC/GO
1992 - Goiânia GO - Solo, at Casa de Cultura Cora Coralina
1994 - Brasília DF - Solo, at IAB/DF
1997 - Goiânia GO - Solo, at Fundação Jaime Câmara
2001 - Goiás GO - Solo, at Conde dos Arcos
Group Exhibitions
1955 - São Paulo SP - 3rd São Paulo International Architecture Biennial
1964 - Goiânia GO - 1st Goiás Artist Salon - drawing prize
1969 - Goiânia GO - Group Show of Artists from Goiás, at Palácio da Cultura
1981 - Brasília DF - 1st Show of Architect Visual Artists - drawing, at IAB/DF
1982 - Brasília DF - 2nd Show of Architect Visual Artists - drawing, at IAB/DF
1983 - Brasília DF - Resumo 83: jovens artistas de Brasília [Summary 83: Young Artists from Brasília], at Itaugaleria
1984 - Brasília DF - Group show with Amaury Menezes, at Galeria Contemporânea de Arte
1984 - Brasília DF - Group Show of Artists from the Central-West, at Galeria Contemporânea de Arte
1984 - Brasília DF - Opening group show of Galeria Contemporânea de Arte
1984 - Goiânia GO - Goiânia National Visual Arts Salon - acquisition prize
1984 - Goiânia GO - Goiânia National Visual Arts Salon - acquisition prize
1998 - Catalão GO - 60 Artistas nos 60 Anos do Jornal O Popular [60 Artists for the 60 Years of the Newspaper O Popular], at Fórum Municipal
1998 - Goiânia GO - 60 Artistas nos 60 Anos do Jornal O Popular [60 Artists for the 60 Years of the Newspaper O Popular], at Fundação Jaime Câmara
1998 - Itumbiara GO - 60 Artistas nos 60 Anos do Jornal O Popular [60 Artists for the 60 Years of the Newspaper O Popular], at Casa de Cultura de Itumbiara
1998 - Rio Verde GO - 60 Artistas nos 60 Anos do Jornal O Popular [60 Artists for the 60 Years of the Newspaper O Popular], at Secretaria Municipal de Ciências, Tecnologia e Cultura. Palácio da Intendência
2004 - Petrópolis RJ - Via BR 040: serracerrado, at Museu Imperial
Source: Itaú Cultural
