Marcello Nitsche (São Paulo SP 1942 - idem 2017)
Marcello Nitsche was a painter, intermedia artist, sculptor, draftsman, printmaker and teacher. He earned a teaching degree in drawing from the Faculdade de Belas Artes of the Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (Faap) in São Paulo, completing the course in 1969. That same year, he received the São Paulo City Hall prize for the most relevant research work presented at the Bienal Internacional de São Paulo.
He began his career as a printmaker but soon devoted himself to painting. His work came close to Pop art, with pieces influenced by the image-making processes typical of comics. From the 1980s onward, the gestural quality of painting and the structure of brushstrokes became central elements of his work.
Marcello Nitsche also created sculptures installed in public spaces, such as Garatuja [Scribble] (1978), a modular structure in the Praça da Sé, and Pincelada Tridimensional [Three-Dimensional Brushstroke] (2000), in the Parque da Luz, both in São Paulo. From 2001 onward, his paintings explored barcodes, incorporating vertical lines and number sequences as their predominant visual elements.
Critical Commentary
Marcello Nitsche begins his career as a printmaker. Soon afterward, he turns to painting, inspired by the language of Pop art. It is no accident that the physicist and art critic Mario Schenberg calls him "the most pop of Brazilian artists".1 In his pictures, he appropriates comics with irony and a sense of humor. From 1965 onward, he begins to move away from paint and brush, working with graphic images and objective, unconventional formats. The politically engaged work Aliança para o Progresso [Alliance for Progress], 1965, is typical of this phase.
In 1968 he creates Bolhas [Bubbles], large inflatable sculptures, which he shows at the Salão de Brasília and at the Bienal Internacional de São Paulo. According to the critic Aracy Amaral, these inflatables are "one of the high points of Brazilian creativity of that decade; environmental and thought-provoking, they link the work with the participating public and its context".2 In 1969, he makes his first film, Acrilírico. Two years later, he continues this work, making experimental Super-8 films such as O Mar [The Sea] and Cubo de Fumaça [Smoke Cube].
During the first half of the 1970s, he makes other films. He co-directs the short film Superfícies Habitáveis [Habitable Surfaces], 1973, and makes Auto-Retrato [Self-Portrait] and Costura: [Seam:], 1975. These works show the artist's growing interest in appropriating established genres and elements of the artistic tradition. Along this line of research, in 1978 he makes the sculpture Garatuja [Scribble], a large modular structure imitating one of the gestures of painting: the scribble. The piece is placed in the Praça da Sé, in São Paulo, the first of a series of three-dimensional works shown in open spaces.
In the 1980s, the gestural elements of painting become the main subject of Nitsche's work. The artist takes free brushstrokes and spontaneous gestures and turns them into graphic signs. The work becomes increasingly complex. Instead of dealing with a single gesture, he begins to work with a web of brushstrokes. In the sculpture Pincelada Tridimensional [Three-Dimensional Brushstroke], 2000, a mesh of gestures is turned into a graphic form, made into a three-dimensional object and then installed in the Parque da Luz, in São Paulo. These gestural, objectified forms are explored throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 2001, he develops a new series of paintings inspired by barcodes. According to the historian Ana Maria Belluzzo, "the pictures, modulated by vertical lines and marked by numbers, are reduced paintings, distinguished by the variation of minimal elements (...) Exploring the possibilities of the barcode itself opens a new stage of investigation for Marcello Nitsche, who individualizes and diversifies each picture, each series, each multiple".3
Notes
1 SCHENBERG, Mario. Marcelo Nitsche. In: ______. Pensando a arte. São Paulo: Nova Stella, 1988. p. 41.
2 AMARAL, Aracy. Olhando os fragiles de Nitsche. In: ______. Arte e meio artístico: entre a feijoada e o x-burguer : 1961 - 1981. São Paulo: Nobel, 1983. p. 357.
3 NITSCHE, Marcello. O código universal da pintura versus; o código universal dos produtos. São Paulo: Galeria São Paulo, 2002.
Critiques
"(...) Extraordinarily provocative, terribly serious, Nitsche's work [Bolha] frightens, in its initial unfolding, the public around it, like a strange living organism extending its evolving power through the space it increasingly occupies, frightening the nearest onlookers and physically pressing the viewer. (...) Even the noise of the machine, accompanying the work and 'growing' up to its 'orgasm', is important from the point of view of communication, conveying to each person present a vibration in this erotic unfolding of the sex-form, genital in the work at rest, up to its climax."
Aracy Amaral
Amaral, Aracy, apres. Dos carimbos à bolha. In: NITSCHE, Marcello. Marcello Nitsche. Apres. Aracy Amaral. São Paulo: Galeria Arte Global, 1976.
"Marcello Nitsche is one of the most promising figures of young Brazilian art, the most gifted of his generation in São Paulo. He is perhaps the most pop of Brazilian artists. But his pop style is by no means a mere repetition of pop trends from other countries: it arises from an authentic, profound experience of the environment of the São Paulo metropolis, especially of what characterizes it as Brazil's great industrial center. In fact, the great difference between Nitsche and the Rio artists of the New Objectivity stems precisely from his capturing of this environment, which does not exist in Rio de Janeiro or in any other Brazilian city. Marcello Nitsche is to São Paulo what Hélio Oiticica and Rubens Gerchman are to Guanabara. In my opinion, an authentic Brazilian pop can only be born in São Paulo, a modern city with almost no living presence of the past, where contemporary mass culture is felt with incomparably greater force than in other Brazilian cities. (...) Nitsche has an extremely modern visual sense, very subtly modern. He is repelled by a certain prettiness of advertising posters, so often found even in good Brazilian pop artists. He knows how to see extremely informal or even fluid plastic structures, which escape our pop artists influenced by Concretism. In his objects, structures always appear as products of social life, never as deliberately sought plastic elaborations."
Mario Schenberg
[Texto escrito originalmente em 1967]
SCHENBERG, Mario. Pensando a arte. Fotografia Romulo Fialdini. São Paulo: Nova Stella, 1988. p. 41-42.
"The beauty of Marcello Nitsche's works lies in the reasons that drive the technique with which they are made.
These techniques, which the artist masters, and masters enviably, are demanded by his ideas about what to do to say what he means. And what they say is an intriguing and very beautiful discourse on the virtues of nature. Surprising, revealing emotion about the phenomena of nature, a discourse on knowledge, intriguing, irreplaceable. A sweet, longing look at the origins and the eternal incompleteness of the formation of consciousness and language. The paths of man in the universe. The inflatables, the cube drawn with light clouds in the blue sky... each is a way of repeating forms never built this way before. Fluid mechanics, capillarity, surface tension, moments of matter, nature caught by surprise to reveal new ways of knowing, new configurations of that same apparently unchanging nature, which is now no longer what it seemed. Science and technique drawn in invented languages in artistic form."
Paulo A. Mendes da Rocha
NITSCHE, Marcello. Marcello Nitsche. Apresentação Paulo Mendes da Rocha. São Paulo: Ana Cláudia Roso Escritório de Arte, 1994.
Solo Exhibitions
1968 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at MAM/RJ
1973 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Galeria Grupo B
1975 - Curitiba PR - Seam in the Landscape, art event at the Pedreira do Pilarzinho
1975 - Curitiba PR - Solo, at Fundação Cultural de Curitiba
1975 - Washington (United States) - Solo, at Art Gallery of Brazilian Cultural Institute
1976 - São Paulo SP - Man and Landscape, at Galeria Global
1977 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Múltipla Galeria de Arte
1977 - Washington (United States) - Solo, at Art Gallery of Brazilian Cultural Institute
1978 - Porto Alegre RS - Solo, at Galeria Guignard
1979 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Itaugaleria
1980 - João Pessoa PB - Color Object Exhibition, at Núcleo de Arte Contemporânea
1980 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Itaugaleria
1980 - São Paulo SP - Performance: Objetos Frágiles, at Cooperativa dos Artistas Plásticos de São Paulo
1981 - Porto Alegre RS - Performance: Objetos Frágiles, at Espaço Nervo-Ótico
1981 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Performance: Objetos Frágiles, at Funarte/INAP
1981 - São Paulo SP - Joyful Greetings, at Galeria de Arte São Paulo - APCA Best Exhibition of the Year Award
1982 - Curitiba PR and Rio de Janeiro RJ - Joyful Greetings, at Fundação Cultural de Curitiba and MAM/RJ
1983 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria Suzanna Sassoun
1983 - São Paulo SP - Brushstrokes, at Paulo Figueiredo Galeria de Arte
1984 - Caxias do Sul RS - The Bubble, Playful Object, at Faculdade de Artes Plásticas da Universidade de Caxias do Sul
1984 - Fortaleza CE - Solo, at Galeria Dodora
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Lines, at Galeria Artespaço
1984 - São Paulo SP - Project, Reinterpretation, Tribute to Waldemar Cordeiro, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1985 - São Paulo SP - Gestures, Planes and Lines, at Galeria Paulo Figueiredo
1985 - São Paulo SP - Tables, at Galeria Suzanna Sassoun
1986 - Presidente Prudente SP - The Bubble, at Secretaria de Cultura de Presidente Prudente
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Planes, at Galeria Artespaço
1987 - Jundiaí SP - Lines and Patches, at Prefeitura Municipal de Jundiaí
1987 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria Millan
1991 - João Pessoa PB - Performance, at Triângulo Inflado
1993 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria Ana Cláudia Roso Escritório de Arte
1994 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria Ana Cláudia Roso Escritório de Arte
2000 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria Múltipla de Arte
2002 - São Paulo SP - The Universal Code of Painting versus the Universal Code of Products, at Galeria de Arte São Paulo
2005 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria Merian Mauro
2008 - São Paulo SP - Explosions, at Estação Pinacoteca
2008 - São Paulo SP - The Onomatopoeic Space, at Centro Universitário Maria Antonia
Group Exhibitions
1965 - São Paulo SP - 1st University Visual Arts Meeting - honorable mention
1965 - São Paulo SP - Group show, at Galeria Ponto de Encontro
1966 - Campinas SP - 2nd Contemporary Art Salon - honorable mention
1966 - São Paulo SP - 2nd University Visual Arts Meeting - honorable mention
1967 - Brasília DF - 4th Federal District Salon of Modern Art, at Teatro Nacional Cláudio Santoro - Brasília National Prize
1967 - Campinas SP - 3rd Campinas Contemporary Art Salon, at MACC - large silver medal
1967 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Nova Objetividade Brasileira [New Brazilian Objectivity], at MAM/RJ
1967 - São Paulo SP - 9th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal - Itamaraty Acquisition Prize
1967 - São Paulo SP - Group show, at Rex Gallery & Sons
1968 - Brasília DF - Federal District Modern Art Salon - Brasília National Prize
1968 - Campinas SP - 4th Contemporary Art Salon, at MACC - research prize
1968 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Flags in the Square, at Praça General Osório
1968 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Brazilian Artist and Mass Iconography, at Esdi
1968 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Inflatable Objects, at MAM/RJ
1968 - São Paulo SP - Group show, at Galeria Art-Art
1968 - São Paulo SP - First São Paulo Opinion Fair, at Teatro Ruth Escobar
1969 - Paris (France) - 4th Paris Biennale - artist selected to represent Brazil
1969 - São Paulo SP - 10th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal - São Paulo City Hall Prize
1970 - Belo Horizonte MG - Object and Participation, at Palácio das Artes
1971 - São Paulo SP - 11th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1972 - Medellín (Colombia) - 3rd Coltejer Art Biennial
1972 - São Paulo SP - 4th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1972 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Multiplied Art, at Múltipla de Arte
1973 - Cali (Colombia) - 2nd Graphic Arts Biennial
1973 - São Paulo SP - Group show, at Galeria Astréia
1973 - São Paulo SP - Expo-Projeção 73, at Espaço Grife
1975 - Curitiba PR - Art in the City, at MAC/PR
1975 - Washington (United States) - Group show, at Art Gallery of Brazilian Cultural Institute
1977 - São Paulo SP - 9th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1977 - Washington (United States) - Group show, at Art Gallery of Brazilian Cultural Institute
1978 - Buenos Aires (Argentina) - 15 Young Artists from Brazil (1978 : Buenos Aires, Argentina) - Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (Argentina)
1978 - Buenos Aires (Argentina) - 15 Young Artists from Brazil, at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires
1978 - São Paulo SP - 15 Young Artists from Brazil, at MAB/Faap
1978 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 18th Art and Ecological Thought, at Biblioteca Euclides da Cunha
1978 - São Paulo SP - 1st São Paulo International Video Art Meeting, at MIS/SP
1978 - São Paulo SP - The Object in Art: Brazil in the 1960s, at MAB/Faap
1979 - São Paulo SP - 11th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1979 - São Paulo SP - 15th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1979 - São Paulo SP - Drawing as an Instrument, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1979 - São Paulo SP - The Multiple in Art, at Galeria Múltipla de Arte
1979 - São Paulo SP - Return to the Figure: The 1960s, at Museu Lasar Segall
1979 - São Paulo SP - Xerox, at Galeria Pindorama
1980 - Belo Horizonte MG - 3rd Belo Horizonte National Visual Arts Salon - urban intervention prize for Vaca de Concreto [Concrete Cow]
1980 - São Paulo SP - Two Meters and One Page, at sede da Cooperativa dos Artistas Plásticos
1980 - São Paulo SP - Xerographs, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1981 - Guarujá SP - 4 Painters, at Hotel Jequitimar
1981 - Guarujá SP - Open-Air Sculpture, at Hotel Jequitimar
1981 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Artists, at Galeria de Arte São Paulo
1981 - São Paulo SP - 13th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1981 - São Paulo SP - Heliographs, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1981 - São Paulo SP - Heliography Show, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1982 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 5th National Visual Arts Salon, at MAM/RJ
1982 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Universe of Football, at MAM/RJ
1982 - São Paulo SP - Artemicro, at Paço das Artes and MIS/SP
1983 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 3000 Cubic Meters, at Espaço Cultural Sérgio Porto
1983 - São Paulo SP - Reinterpretation Project, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1984 - Fortaleza CE - 7th National Visual Arts Salon
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 7th National Visual Arts Salon, at MAM/SP
1984 - São Paulo SP - Tradition and Rupture: A Synthesis of Brazilian Art and Culture, at Fundação Bienal
1985 - Brasília DF - Brazilianness and Independence, at Teatro Nacional Cláudio Santoro - Fundação Cultural de Brasília
1985 - São Paulo SP - 16th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1985 - São Paulo SP - 18th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1985 - São Paulo SP - Highlights of Brazilian Contemporary Art, at MAM/SP
1986 - Fortaleza CE - Imagine: The Planet Greets the Comet, at Arte Galeria
1986 - Porto Alegre RS - Rubem Knijnik Collection: Brazilian Art of the 1960s/70s/80s, at Margs
1986 - São Paulo SP - 17th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP - Júlio Bogoricin Prize for body of work
1986 - São Paulo SP - The New Dimension of the Object, at MAC/USP
1986 - São Paulo SP - Six Times: 80 Years, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1987 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, at MAM/RJ
1988 - Beijing (China) - 1st Brazil-China Exhibition, at Galeria de Belas Artes da China
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st Sculpture Biennial, at EAV/Parque Lage
1988 - São Paulo SP - 19th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1988 - São Paulo SP - 63/66 Figure and Object, at Galeria Millan
1988 - São Paulo SP - MAC 25 Years: Recent Acquisitions and Donations, at MAC/USP
1988 - São Paulo SP - 6th São Paulo Contemporary Art Salon
1989 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 200 Years of the French Revolution, at Galeria GB
1989 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Paths Group Show, at Rio Design Center
1989 - São Paulo SP - World Environment Day, Art Event, at Praça da Sé
1990 - São Paulo SP - 18 Years of Galeria Múltipla, at Múltipla Galeria de Arte
1990 - São Paulo SP - Color in Brazilian Art, at Paço das Artes
1990 - São Paulo SP - Bardi 90: Tribute to Professor Pietro Maria Bardi's 90th Birthday, at Masp
1990 - São Paulo SP - The Multiple as Seen by Baravelli, Marcello Nitsche, Maria Bonomi, Norberto Nicola, Peticov and Vlavianos, at Múltipla Galeria de Arte
1991 - Curitiba PR - Museu Municipal de Arte: Collection, at Museu Municipal de Arte
1991 - São Paulo SP - Color in Brazilian Art. Retrospective, at Paço das Artes
1991 - São Paulo SP - Two Periods, at Nova Galeria Múltipla
1991 - São Paulo SP - Year-End Exhibition, at Galeria Choice
1991 - São Paulo SP - Imaginary Museum, at Casa das Rosas
1992 - São Paulo SP - The Seduction of Volumes: The Three-Dimensional Works of the MAC, at MAC/USP
1994 - Belo Horizonte MG - The Ephemeral in Brazilian Art: 1960s/70s
1994 - Penápolis SP - The Ephemeral in Brazilian Art: 1960s/70s, at Galeria Itaú Cultural
1994 - São Paulo SP - Flags: 60 Artists Celebrate USP's 60th Anniversary, at MAC/USP
1994 - São Paulo SP - Bienal Brasil Século XX, at Fundação Bienal
1994 - São Paulo SP - The Ephemeral in Brazilian Art: 1960s/70s, at Itaú Cultural
1995 - São Paulo SP - 1st United Artists, at Casa das Rosas
1996 - Brasília DF - The Ephemeral in Brazilian Art: 1960s/70s, at Galeria Itaú Cultural
1996 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Art: 50 Years of History in the MAC/USP Collection: 1920-1970, at MAC/USP
1996 - São Paulo SP - Flags, at Galeria de Arte do Sesi
1996 - São Paulo SP - The World of Mario Schenberg, at Casa das Rosas
1997 - São Paulo SP - Beyond Form/At the Limit of Form, at Casa das Rosas
1997 - São Paulo SP - Art Support Computer, at Casa das Rosas
1997 - São Paulo SP - Four Materials, at Skultura Galeria de Arte
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 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Modern and the Contemporary in Brazilian Art: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection - MAM/RJ, at MAM/RJ
1998 - São Paulo SP - The Modern and the Contemporary in Brazilian Art: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection - MAM/RJ, at Masp
1998 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Art, at Sérgio Caribé Galeria de Arte
1998 - São Paulo SP - Skultura Collection 98, at Skultura Galeria de Arte
1999 - São Paulo SP - Everyday Life/Art. Technique, at Itaú Cultural
2000 - São Paulo SP - The Pirelli Collection in the MAM Collection: Brazilian Art in the 1960s, at MAM/SP
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Sculpture: From the Pinacoteca to the Jardim da Luz, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2001 - Campinas SP - Displacements of the Self: The Digital and Pre-Digital Self-Portrait in Brazilian Art 1976 - 2001, at Itaú Cultural
2001 - Porto Alegre RS - Liba and Rubem Knijnik Collection: Brazilian Contemporary Art, at Margs
2001 - São Paulo SP - Museu de Arte Brasileira: 40 Years, at MAB/Faap
2002 - Fortaleza CE - Ceará Rediscovers Brazil, at Centro Dragão do Mar de Arte e Cultura
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Paths of the Contemporary 1952-2002, at Paço Imperial
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 - Imaginary Mexico: The Gaze of the Brazilian Artist, at Casa das Rosas
2002 - São Paulo SP - Open Opera: Celebration, at Casa das Rosas
2002 - São Paulo SP - Who Makes the Biennials, at Galeria Múltipla de Arte
2003 - São Paulo SP - The Subversion of Media, at Itaú Cultural
2003 - São Paulo SP - Art and Society: A Controversial Relationship, at Itaú Cultural
2004 - Campinas SP - Metrópolis Collection of Contemporary Art, at Espaço Cultural CPFL
2004 - São Paulo SP - Biennials, at Hotel Sofitel São Paulo
2005 - São Paulo SP - Art in Metrópolis, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake
2005 - São Paulo SP - Visualities/Techniques, at Instituto Cervantes
2005 - Curitiba PR - Art in Metrópolis, at Museu Oscar Niemeyer
2006 - São Paulo SP - MAM, at Oca
2006 - São Paulo SP - Long Live the Living Culture of the Brazilian People, at Museu Afro-Brasil
2007 - São Paulo SP - The 1970s - Art as Question, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake
2008 - São Paulo SP - Art for the Amazon: Art and Attitude, at Fundação Bienal
2008 - São Paulo SP - MAM 60, at Oca
2008 - São Paulo SP - Panorama of Panoramas, at MAM
2009 - São Paulo SP - Two Times, at AC Galeria de Arte
Source: Itaú Cultural
