Leda Catunda (São Paulo SP 1961)
Leda Catunda is a painter and printmaker. She studied Visual Arts at the Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (FAAP) in São Paulo between 1980 and 1984, where her teachers included Regina Silveira (1939), Julio Plaza (1938-2003), Nelson Leirner (1932) and Walter Zanini (1925). In 1986, she began her teaching career at FAAP and also in her own studio, where she taught until the mid-1990s. Since the late 1980s, she has given workshops and open courses at various cultural institutions in Brazil and occasionally abroad.
In 1990, she received the Prêmio Brasília de Artes Plásticas/Distrito Federal in the acquisition category. In 2003, she obtained her doctorate in Arts with the dissertation Poética da Maciez: Pinturas e Objetos Poéticos [Poetics of Softness: Paintings and Poetic Objects] at the Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo (ECA/USP), under the supervision of Julio Plaza. She also had a significant career as a teacher, teaching painting and drawing in the Visual Arts program at the Faculdade Santa Marcelina (FASM) in São Paulo between 1998 and 2005. In 1998, the book Leda Catunda, written by Tadeu Chiarelli, was published by Cosac & Naify.
Critical Commentary
Leda Catunda studies visual arts at the Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado - Faap in São Paulo from 1980 to 1984. There, she attends classes by Nelson Leirner (1932), Regina Silveira (1939), Julio Plaza (1938-2003) and Walter Zanini (1925). Her teachers introduce her to debates on conceptual art, the status of the artwork, its commodification and the use of technological means of production. At the same time, she becomes interested in the neo-expressionist painting produced in Europe and the United States by artists such as Julian Schnabel (1951), Sandro Chia (1946) and Francesco Clemente (1952). According to the art critic Tadeu Chiarelli, in her early works Leda deals with critical issues from the conceptual debate as well as with the visual concerns of the neo-expressionists. In 1982, she makes lithographs in which she appropriates television images, a procedure familiar to her teachers' generation. At the same time, she paints realist pictures.
The following year, painting becomes central to her poetics. She works on printed fabrics, covering the figures with color. She continues working on printed surfaces. Instead of covering the images, her painting highlights them, as in Jaguar (1984). She creates figurations by bringing together unusual objects and supports. She joins cut-out fabrics, sews them together and superimposes elements unusual in painting. The works lie between painting and object. The artist also deals with figurative motifs found in popular culture.
Gradually, the focus of her work shifts from figuration to structural issues. Chiarelli states that "in 1989 (...) Leda tries to resize her production, paying closer attention to its visual and plastic aspects, striving forcefully to free herself from the anecdotal and strongly narrative character of her earlier work". She does not abandon the figure; however, she concentrates on formal relationships and on structuring the canvas through the use of unconventional materials, such as socks and T-shirts.
In the 1990s, she deepens her interest in the specific nature of the materials she works with. She creates pictorial surfaces by superimposing fabrics and other flat, colored media. She works with diverse elements such as tulle, velvet, plastic, quilting, canvas, leather and Formica. Her way of grouping them is sometimes abstract. In other works, such as the reliefs, the composition keeps a familiarity with recurring images, starting from simple motifs such as the drawing of the moon, insects, drops and parts of the body. In these works, made in the second half of the 1990s, she comes close to the sculptures of Claes Oldenburg (1929).
Critiques
"(...) Leda's originality lies in her materials, her attitude and her making. She paints on utterly unconventional supports, often taking advantage of images already present on them. (...) instead of canvases, there is a beach tent, the leather of dismantled armchairs, bath towels, comforters, heavy lace, wigs and even the little frills of a blender cover, transformed into the roofs of little houses in which lights go on. One of the most provocative works is the one with the wigs. A composition in black, dramatic, somewhat morbid. It results from the artist's trip to Japan and reproduces - with absolute freedom - the claustrophobic atmosphere of the crowds in the Tokyo subway. Leda's figuration - she admits she cannot draw a person - is admittedly somewhat clumsy, except when she takes the opportunity to color drawings already printed. This painting must be read with the eyes of 1987, understanding art as a vigorous and personal idea, whose strength counts more than the execution and the 'kitchen' of technique. (...)".
Olívio Tavares de Araújo
LOUZADA, Júlio. Artes plásticas Brasil 1985: seu mercado, seus leilões. Prefácio Pietro Maria Bardi; Mino Carta. São Paulo: J. Louzada, 1984. p. 240.
"At a time when painting has been scrutinized, analyzed, worked through in its essentials and apparently exhausted in modernity, as in projects such as Robert Ryman's, Leda Catunda neither elides nor tries to sidestep the reification of painting; Catunda deploys her irony. Supports and surface, paint (drips and brushstrokes), color - everything is in collapse. Painting rediscovers its meaning every time an artist reinvents a way of painting. In her passion for painting, Catunda escapes, in her relationship with the history of painting, certain epidemics, such as the epidemic of metaphors and the epidemic of quotations. (...)
In short, her painting is paradoxical: it pursues reality without giving up the sensual surface (...). She does not think she has to choose between feeling and thought (...). Her painting reveals the basis of the inhuman nature in which man has settled. Leda Catunda's painting settles in that restless territory of problematic reconciliation between the senses and reason".
Paulo Herkenhoff
CATUNDA, Leda. Leda Catunda. Texto Paulo Herkenhoff; tradução Esther Stearns d'Utra e Silva. São Paulo: Galeria Camargo Vilaça, 1996.
"Almost twenty years after her first major appearance on the São Paulo and Brazilian art circuit, Leda Catunda stands out today as an artist who has known, as never before, how to blend the teachings received from her professors at Faap, and her experience as one of the most prominent artists throughout the past decade, with a strong component of restlessness regarding the possibilities of art today.
Instead of settling into the first discoveries of her career, she dared to redirect the course of her work toward an extremely particular deepening of painting, both as an institution and as a sensitive mode of knowing the world. To do so, she introduced into this field procedures traditionally foreign to it, which established her singularity in the visual arts in Brazil.
Still fully in the process of expanding and consolidating her poetics, painstakingly rescued from the abrupt turns and detours that marked her career at the end of the last decade and the beginning of this one, the artist Leda Catunda nonetheless already shows that she has found a definitive direction for her work, emphasizing and expanding the limits of painting as an instrument for questioning form and the perception of the world".
Tadeu Chiarelli
CHIARELLI, Tadeu. Problematizando a natureza da pintura. In: LEDA Catunda. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 1998. p. 29.
Solo Exhibitions
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Thomas Cohn Arte Contemporânea
1986 - Porto Alegre RS - Leda Catunda: Research Space, at Margs
1987 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria Luisa Strina
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Thomas Cohn Arte Contemporânea
1990 - Americana SP - Solo, at MAC/Americana
1990 - Recife PE - Solo, at Espaço Pasárgada
1990 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria de Arte São Paulo
1992 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Solo, at Módulo Centro Difusor de Arte
1992 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria de Arte São Paulo
1992 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at CCSP
1993 - Porto (Portugal) - Solo, at Módulo Centro Difusor de Arte
1994 - São José dos Campos SP - Solo, at Fundação Cultural Cassiano Ricardo
1996 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria Camargo Vilaça
1997 - Goiânia GO - Solo, at Galeria de Arte Marina Potrich
1997 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Paço Imperial
1998 - Curitiba PR - Solo, at Galeria Casa da Imagem
1998 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria Camargo Vilaça
1999 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Paço das Artes
2000 - Belo Horizonte MG - Solo, at Kalil e Lauar Galeria de Arte
2000 - Goiânia GO - Solo, at Galeria de Arte Marina Potrich
2000 - Vila Velha ES - Leda Catunda: Soft Paintings, at Museu Vale do Rio Doce
2002 - São Paulo SP - Portrait, at Galeria Fortes Vilaça
2003 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at CCSP
2003 - São Paulo SP - Poetics of Softness: Paintings and Objects, at Centro Universitário Maria Antonia
2004 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria Fortes Vilaça
Group Exhibitions
1981 - Santos SP - 9th Young Art Salon
1982 - São Paulo SP - 1st National Festival of Women in the Arts, at MAC/USP
1983 - São Paulo SP - 17th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1983 - São Paulo SP - Art in the Street 1
1983 - São Paulo SP - Painting as a Medium, at MAC/USP
1984 - Fortaleza CE - 7th National Visual Arts Salon
1984 - Havana (Cuba) - 1st Havana Biennial, at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
1984 - Madrid (Spain) - ARCO/84
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - How Are You, Geração 80?, at EAV/Parque Lage
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 7th National Visual Arts Salon, at MAM/RJ
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Stand 320: Young Brazilian Painting, at Thomas Cohn Arte Contemporânea
1984 - São Paulo SP - Leda Catunda, Sérgio Romagnolo, Ciro Cozzolino and Leonilson, at Galeria Luisa Strina
1985 - Brasília DF - Brazilianness and Independence, at Teatro Nacional Cláudio Santoro
1985 - São Paulo SP - 18th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1985 - São Paulo SP - Trends in the Artist's Book in Brazil, at CCSP
1985 - Tokyo (Japan) - Today's Art of Brazil, at Hara Museum of Contemporary Art
1986 - Fortaleza CE - Imagine: The Planet Greets the Comet, at Arte Galeria
1986 - Guadalajara (Mexico) - Paintings: Escrete Volador
1986 - New York (United States) - Brazilian Painting, at Snug Harbor Cultural Center
1986 - Porto Alegre RS - Rubem Knijnik Collection: Brazilian Art of the 1960s/70s/80s, at Margs
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st Christian Dior Contemporary Art Exhibition: Painting, at Paço Imperial
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Transavantgarde and National Cultures, at MAM/RJ
1987 - Brasília DF - Painting Outside the Frame: 10 Contemporary Artists, at Espaço Capital Arte Contemporânea
1987 - Paris (France) - Modernity: 20th-Century Brazilian Art, at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
1987 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - To the Collector: Tribute to Gilberto Chateaubriand, at MAM/RJ
1987 - São Paulo SP - The Weave of Taste: Another Look at Everyday Life, at Fundação Bienal
1987 - São Paulo SP - Second-Generation Images, at MAC/USP
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 88 x 68: A Review of the Years
1988 - São Paulo SP - Eduardo Brandão Private Collection, at Galeria Casa Triângulo
1988 - São Paulo SP - MAC 25 Years: Recent Acquisitions and Donations, at MAC/USP
1988 - São Paulo SP - Modernity: 20th-Century Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1989 - Amsterdam (Netherlands) - U-ABC, at Stedelijk Museum
1989 - Piracicaba SP - 22nd Piracicaba Contemporary Art Salon
1989 - Porto Alegre RS - Hybrid Art, at Espaço Cultural BFB
1989 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Hybrid Art, at Funarte. Centro de Artes
1989 - São Paulo SP - 20th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1989 - São Paulo SP - Galeria São Paulo Collection, at Galeria de Arte São Paulo
1989 - São Paulo SP - Hybrid Art, at MAM/SP
1989 - São Paulo SP - Recent Perspectives, at CCSP
1990 - Brasília DF - Brasília Visual Arts Prize, at MAB/DF - acquisition prize
1990 - Lisbon (Portugal) - U-ABC, at Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão
1990 - Piracicaba SP - 22nd Piracicaba Contemporary Art Salon
1991 - Caracas (Venezuela) - Brasil: la nueva generación, at Fundación Museo de Bellas Artes
1991 - São Paulo SP - BR/80. Brazilian Painting of the 1980s, at Itaugaleria
1991 - São Paulo SP - Visual Arts Exhibition Program, at CCSP
1992 - Paris (France) - Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, at Centre Georges Pompidou
1992 - Seville (Spain) - Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, at Estación Plaza de Armas
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st On the Way to Niterói: João Sattamini Collection, at Paço Imperial
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Contemporary Art, at EAV/Parque Lage
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Coca-Cola 50 Years with Art, at MAM/RJ
1992 - São Paulo SP - Dominant White, at Galeria de Arte São Paulo
1992 - São Paulo SP - Coca-Cola 50 Years with Art, at MAM/SP
1992 - São Paulo SP - Annual Visual Arts Exhibition Program 91, at Fundação Bienal
1992 - São Paulo SP - A Look at the Figurative, at Galeria Casa Triângulo
1993 - Cologne (Germany) - Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, at Kunsthalle Cologne
1993 - Niterói RJ - 2nd On the Way to Niterói: João Sattamini Collection, at MAC/Niterói
1993 - New York (United States) - Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, at MoMA
1993 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Art in the World, a Trajectory: 24 Brazilian Artists, at Dan Galeria
1993 - São Paulo SP - Masp at Morumbi Shopping, at Shopping Morumbi
1993 - Washington (United States) - Ultramodern: The Art of Contemporary Brazil, at The National Museum of Women in the Arts
1994 - São Paulo SP - 22nd Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1994 - São Paulo SP - Bienal Brasil Século XX, at Fundação Bienal
1994 - São Paulo SP - Landscapes
1995 - Denver (United States) - Latin American Women Artists 1915-1995, at Denver Art Museum
1995 - Milwaukee (United States) - Latin American Women Artists 1915-1995, at Milwaukee Art Center
1995 - Phoenix (United States) - Latin American Women Artists 1915-1995, at Phoenix Art Museum
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Perverse Childhood: Fables on Memory and Time, at MAM/RJ
1995 - Salvador BA - Perverse Childhood: Fables on Memory and Time, at MAM/BA
1995 - São Paulo SP - The 1980s: The Stage of Diversity, at Galeria de Arte do Sesi
1995 - São Paulo SP - 1st United Artists, at Casa das Rosas
1996 - Leverkusen (Germany) - Brasilianische Kunst der Gegenwart, at Bayer AG - Foyer Hochhaus W1
1996 - Dormagen (Germany) - Brasilianische Kunst der Gegenwart, at Bayer AG - Feierabendhaus
1996 - Miami (United States) - Latin American Women Artists 1915-1995, at Center for the Fine Arts Miami Art Museum of Dade
1996 - Potsdam (Germany) - Counterpart, at Kunstspeicher
1996 - São Paulo SP - 15 Brazilian Artists, at MAM/SP
1996 - São Paulo SP - 1st Off Biennial, at MuBE
1996 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1996 - São Paulo SP - Women Artists in the MAC Collection, at MAC/USP
1996 - Washington (United States) - Latin American Women Artists 1915-1995, at National Museum of Women in the Arts
1997 - Curitiba PR - The Contemporary Art of Printmaking, at Museu Metropolitano de Arte de Curitiba
1997 - Goiânia GO - Brazilianness: A Collection of Brazilian Artists, at Galeria de Arte Marina Potrich
1997 - Sydney (Australia) - Material Immaterial, at Art Gallery of New South Wales
1997 - Ouro Preto MG - Experiences and Perspectives: 12 Contemporary Visions, at Museu Casa dos Contos
1997 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 15 Brazilian Artists, at MAM/RJ
1997 - São Paulo SP - 1st Contemporary Legacies, at MAC/USP
1998 - Belo Horizonte MG - Emmanuel Nassar, Leda Catunda, Marcos Benjamim, at Kolams Galeria de Arte
1998 - Berlin (Germany) - Der Brasilianische Blick, at Haus der Kulturen der Welt
1998 - Campinas SP - Measures of the Self, at Itaú Cultural
1998 - Goiânia GO - The 1980s, at Galeria de Arte Marina Potrich
1998 - Niterói RJ - Mirror of the Biennial, at MAC/Niterói
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Art in the Collection of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo: Recent Donations 1996-1998, at CCBB
1998 - São Paulo SP - Galeria de Arte São Paulo Collection, at Galeria de Arte São Paulo
1998 - São Paulo SP - Elective Affinities I: The Collector's Eye, at Casa das Rosas
1998 - São Paulo SP - Measures of the Self, at MAM/SP
1998 - São Paulo SP - The Modern and the Contemporary in Brazilian Art: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection - MAM/RJ, at Masp
1999 - Piracicaba SP - 31st Piracicaba Contemporary Art Salon, at Engenho Central
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Image of the Sound of Chico Buarque, at Paço Imperial
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Everyday Life/Art. The Object - 1960s/90s, at MAM/RJ
1999 - São Paulo SP - Everyday Life/Art. Consumption, at Itaú Cultural
1999 - São Paulo SP - Everyday Life/Art. The Object - 1960s/90s, at Itaú Cultural
1999 - São Paulo SP - Everyday Life/Art. The Object - 1990s, at Itaú Cultural
1999 - São Paulo SP - Brazil in the Century of Art, at Galeria de Arte do Sesi
2000 - Curitiba PR - 12th Curitiba Printmaking Show. Marks of the Body, Folds of the Soul
2000 - Lisbon (Portugal) - 20th Century: Art of Brazil, at Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão
2000 - Petrópolis RJ - The Century of Women: Some Artists, at Casa de Petrópolis. Instituto de Cultura
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brasil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition, at Fundação Bienal
2000 - São Paulo SP - Cow Parade
2001 - Porto Alegre RS - 3rd Bienal de Artes Visuais do Mercosul
2001 - Porto Alegre RS - Liba and Rubem Knijnik Collection: Brazilian Contemporary Art, at Margs
2001 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Blind Mirror: Selections from a Contemporary Collection, at Paço Imperial
2001 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Spirit of Our Time, at MAM/RJ
2001 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Culture 1, at Casa das Rosas
2001 - São Paulo SP - Blind Mirror: Selections from a Contemporary Collection, at MAM/SP
2001 - São Paulo SP - The Spirit of Our Time, at MAM/SP
2001 - São Paulo SP - Trajectory of Light in Brazilian Art, at Itaú Cultural
2002 - Brasília DF - Fragments to Their Magnet, at Espaço Cultural Contemporâneo Venâncio
2002 - Niterói RJ - Dialogue, Antagonism and Replication in the Sattamini Collection, at MAC/Niterói
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Art in the Field, at Centro Cultural da Justiça Federal
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Paths of the Contemporary 1952-2002, at Paço Imperial
2002 - São Paulo SP - 28 (+) Painting, at Espaço Virgílio
2002 - São Paulo SP - Metrópolis Collection of Contemporary Art, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2002 - São Paulo SP - Inflatables, at Sesc Belenzinho
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 - São Paulo SP - Open Work: Celebration, at Casa das Rosas
2002 - São Paulo SP - Paralela, at Galpão localizado na Avenida Matarazzo, 530
2002 - São Paulo SP - Rotativa Phase 2, at Galeria Fortes Vilaça
2003 - São Paulo SP - 2080, at MAM/SP
2003 - São Paulo SP - Recent Acquisitions 2003 by the MAM Contemporary Group, at MAM/SP
2003 - São Paulo SP - MAC USP 40 Years: Contemporary Interfaces, at MAC/USP
2003 - São Paulo SP - Marcantonio Vilaça - Contemporary Passport, at MAC/USP
2003 - São Paulo SP - My Friends, at MAM/SP
2004 - Campinas SP - Metrópolis Collection of Contemporary Art, at Espaço Cultural CPFL
2004 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Where Are You, Geração 80?, at CCBB
2004 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Art in the Municipal Collection, at CCSP
2004 - São Paulo SP - Summer Bazaar, at Galeria Fortes Vilaça
2004 - São Paulo SP - Still Life / Natureza Morta, at Galeria de Arte do Sesi
2005 - São Paulo SP - Art in Metrópolis, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake
Source: Itaú Cultural
