Felícia Leirner (Warsaw, Poland 1904 - Campos do Jordão SP 1996)
Felícia Leirner was a sculptor. She moved to Brazil with her husband, Isai Leirner, in 1927. In São Paulo, she studied painting with Yolanda Mohalyi (1909 - 1978) and, in 1948, began studying sculpture with Victor Brecheret (1894 - 1955). In the 1950s, her works came to focus mainly on themes of motherhood and family life. In 1959, she held an important retrospective at the Galeria de Arte das Folhas.
From the 1960s, she moved toward abstraction in some of her sculptures. She took part in several editions of the Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, winning the award for best Brazilian sculptor in 1963 and being given a special room in 1965. That same year, she moved to Campos do Jordão, São Paulo, where in 1978 the Museu Felícia Leirner opened, housing about 100 of the artist's sculptures in an open-air setting.
She has works on public display, such as Escultura [Sculpture] (1973), in the Sculpture Garden of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM/SP) in Ibirapuera Park, and Os Pássaros [The Birds] (1978/1979), at Praça da Sé in São Paulo. Books published on her work include Felícia, by the São Paulo State Department of Culture in 1983, and Felícia Leirner: A Arte como Missão [Felícia Leirner: Art as a Mission], with text by art critic Frederico Morais, by the Museu Felícia Leirner in 1991.
Critical Commentary
Felícia Leirner's early work, in the 1950s, shows an affinity with that of her teacher, Victor Brecheret (1894 - 1955). Her main subjects in this period were woman, motherhood and family life. The artist's figures display a formal asymmetry, resulting from the contrast in length between arms and legs or the volume of the body in relation to a tiny head, bringing them close to works by Aristide Maillol (1861 - 1944) and Henry Moore (1898 - 1986). She creates textures on the bronze surface by means of grooves, incisions and graphic marks.
Having initially made isolated figures, the artist began working with complementary forms. She broadened the relationship between empty and solid spaces in her compositions, creating lighter works. For art critic Mário Pedrosa (1900 - 1981), her sculpture is enriched by the contrast between concave and convex planes and by the alternation of shadow and light.
Some of Leirner's works approach abstraction, as in the series Cruzes [Crosses], 1963, or Estruturações [Structurings], 1964/1966. The latter shows an affinity with the constructive strand. In Habitáculos [Shelters], 1966/1967, she explores the field of architecture, coming close to works by Hans Arp (1886 - 1966) and François Stahly (1911). Her sculptures of the 1980s consist of cut-out forms designed to blend into the landscape.
Critiques
"Although freed from the anecdote that still attracted her at the start of her artistic activity, the sculptor has not entirely escaped figuration. Her emotion arises from forms she encounters in nature. She does not stylize them, but uses them as a starting point for the sublimation of her emotions. And what we see as a result is not a tree branch or a strange creature, but a set of forms and movements that produce a particular impression on the viewer. What also characterizes Felícia's art is her love of material. She works it with such sensitivity that she makes it almost pictorial, at times far more sensual, always rich in invention. Will her lyricism lead her to expressionist abstraction? Perhaps. It is undoubtedly an enticing path. Yet the human element seems to move her too much for her to eliminate it entirely from her work. For her, sculpture is not a game; it is an instrument of expression. An instrument she knows how to handle and with which she truly says what she has to say. And she does have something to say".
Sérgio Milliet
LEIRNER, Felícia. Felícia Leirner: dez anos de escultura. São Paulo: Skultura Galeria de Arte, 1959.
"It is significant to note how this sculptor, who began by stylizing isolated figures in which subject matter predominates, arrives at the group in a less sentimental and more detached way. With groups of two, and above all of three, a new element appears that accentuates certain directional preferences already apparent in her first works: I am referring to the concave and convex planes that enrich the spatial play and, by making the already very free interplay of voids and solids more complex, create an alternation of shadow and light full of suggestion. In this much richer movement of advancing and receding planes, of convex surfaces in the light and concave surfaces in shadow, the material tends to efface the resonances of bronze and return to the organic. In this constant inclination toward the organic, Felícia reveals her more than feminine, maternal nature".
Mário Pedrosa
PEDROSA, Mário. Felícia Leirner, escultora. Jornal do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, 07 mar. 1961.
"Felícia Leirner's creative process does not include drawing as an initial activity, as a means of generating form or volume. She never liked to draw, and so she does not make sketches or studies on paper. Having begun sculpting in bronze, which first requires a plaster mold made from a clay model, Felícia always went straight to the material, as if drawing through it. Working with clay is like rewriting the Bible. After all, before the breath that made him walk, Adam was modeled in clay. Thus, handling this original raw material is biblically linked to the very origin of man, and that is why, as Bachelard observes, the true modeler feels, so to speak, a desire to be modeled, a desire to be born into form, come alive in the mass under his fingers. But for Felícia, what came first was not the word, but the gesture. Not drawing, its extension, but clay. Clay, says the artist, 'responds to our hand; better still, it responds to our imagination. As we knead the clay, we see things being born. My soul is like the clay I make my sculptures with. I send it in through my fingers and hands, for it can lodge wherever I want'".
Frederico Morais
MORAIS, Frederico. O processo criador: a mão sonha. In: Felicia Leirner: a arte como missão. Campos do Jordão: Museu Felicia Leirner, 1991. p. 55-57.
Solo Exhibitions
1960 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at MAM/RJ
1961 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at MAM/SP
Group Exhibitions
1953 - São Paulo SP - 2nd Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Pavilhão dos Estados - MAM/RJ Acquisition Prize
1955 - São Paulo SP - 3rd Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Pavilhão das Nações
1957 - São Paulo SP - 12 Artists from São Paulo, at Galeria de Arte das Folhas
1959 - São Paulo SP - 5th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo Sobrinho
1959 - São Paulo SP - Retrospective: Ten Years of Felícia, at Galeria de Arte das Folhas
1960 - São Paulo SP - Women's Contribution to the Visual Arts in Brazil, at MAM/SP
1961 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st The Face and the Work, at Galeria Ibeu Copacabana
1961 - São Paulo SP - 6th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo Sobrinho
1963 - São Paulo SP - 7th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal - prize melhor escultor nacional
1965 - São Paulo SP - 8th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1966 - Brasília DF - Brasília Modern Art Salon
1967 - São Paulo SP - 9th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1971 - São Paulo SP - 11th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1973 - São Paulo SP - 12th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1978 - Penápolis SP - 3rd Noroeste Visual Arts Salon, at Fundação Educacional de Penápolis. Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Penápolis
1978 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Sculpture in Urban Space: 50 Years, at Praça Nossa Senhora da Paz
1979 - São Paulo SP - 15th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1981 - Guarujá SP - Open-Air Sculpture, at Hotel Jequitimar
1981 - São Paulo SP - 13th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1982 - São Paulo SP - A Century of Sculpture in Brazil, at Masp
1983 - São Paulo SP - Skultura Galeria de Arte
1984 - São Paulo SP - Tradition and Rupture: A Synthesis of Brazilian Art and Culture, at Fundação Bienal
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 8th National Visual Arts Salon, at MAM/RJ
1986 - São Paulo SP - Birds Series, at Galeria Skultura
1988 - São Paulo SP - MAC 25 Years: Highlights of the Initial Collection, at MAC/USP
1992 - São Paulo SP - The Seduction of Volumes: The Three-Dimensional Works of the MAC, at MAC/USP
1994 - São Paulo SP - Bienal Brasil Século XX, at Fundação Bienal
Posthumous Exhibitions
1996 - São Paulo SP - 4th Studio Unesp, Sesc and Senai of Image Technologies, at Sesc Pompeia
1996 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Art: 50 Years of History in the MAC/USP Collection: 1920-1970, at MAC/USP
1996 - São Paulo SP - Women Artists in the MAC Collection, at MAC/USP
1997 - São Paulo SP - Three-Dimensionality in 20th-Century Brazilian Art, at Itaú Cultural
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 - Skultura Collection 98, at Skultura Galeria de Arte
Source: Itaú Cultural
