Reynaldo Fonseca (Recife PE 1925 - 2019)
Reynaldo Fonseca was a painter, muralist and illustrator. In 1936, he attended the Escola de Belas Artes de Pernambuco, in Recife, as a listener, in Recife, where he was a student of Lula Cardoso Ayres (1910-1987) and studied teaching teaching. In 1944, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he studied for six months with Candido Portinari (1903-1962). He was one of the founders of the Society of Modern Art of Recife (SAMR), an association that proposed a rupture with the academic education system. In 1948, he took a study trip to Europe. Between 1949 and 1951, he studied metal engraving with Henrique Oswald (1918-1965) at the Lyceum of Arts and Crafts in Rio de Janeiro. In addition to engraving, he also used watercolor and, predominantly, the technique of oil on canvas, with a production focused on figurativeism.
In mid-1952, he became a professor of artistic design at the School of Fine Arts at the University. Federal of Pernambuco (UFPE). He attended the collective studio, founded by Abelardo da Hora (1924), where he taught drawing courses. In 1964, he made a mural for Banco do Brasil, in Recife. In 1969, he returned to reside in Rio de Janeiro and returned to Recife in the early 1980s. He illustrated, among others, the book Painting and Poesia Brasileiras, with poems by João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999), published in 1980. Between 1993 and 1994, the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (CCBB) held a retrospective exhibition of its production, which passed through Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Critical Comment
Reynaldo Fonseca is one of the founders of the Society of Modern Art of Recife - SAMR, an association that proposes the rupture with the academic education system and the creation of a broad cultural movement, covering the areas of education, culture, visual arts, theater and music. He also participates in the collective studio, in Recife, taking drawing courses. Subsequently, he leaves the Pernambuco school of painting and the regional theme.
The painter deliberately remains on the sidelines of the artistic currents that seek to renew art in the country. With a figurative production, he works in watercolor, engraving and mainly in oil on canvas or Duratex. It reveals a great mastery of the design and the careful use of the chromatic range. It often uses clippings of photographs printed in newspapers and magazines, as inspiration for their paintings.
It maintains recurring themes throughout its career, such as family scenes with children and animals, in which a climate of dream, restlessness and strangeness predominates, that evokes surrealism and metaphysical painting. The artist is inspired by paintings from the first Italian and Flemish Renaissance, also in the early North American painters of the 18th and 19th centuries and the surrealists in general. As Roberto Pontual points out, Reynaldo Fonseca focuses on the setup of riddles, halfway between the metaphysical and the fantastic. The resumption of the history of art is carried out patiently, and sometimes with a portion of irony.
Criticism
"Reynaldo Fonseca deliberately remains separated from the currents that seek to renew the art Brazilian, or contribute with any stylistic innovation for its development. Endowed with good technique, making use of solid design and soft and sensitive coloring, it sometimes manages to include in its characters and objects something of ineffable, a certain nostalgic load of poetry and silence, which in its most fragile moments Roça the Pigas, but in the best it acquires a transcendental connotation".
José Roberto Teixeira Leite
"Reynaldo is a painter who masters all the techniques of his craft. By works in engraving and watercolor, his great work is carried out in oil on canvas or Duratex. It is, indisputably, what can be called a virtuoso of the drawing. Immediate recognition, which reveals a seldom comparable consistency in modern painting.
The perception of his figurative painting as abstraction has its foundation in the dream and mystery atmosphere in which the "family scenes", as he calls his paintings, seem to be involved. On the other hand, a sense of estrangement, as a result of unlikely figures and animals, is supported by the opinion of several critics, for whom the characters of Reynaldo Fonseca "are from porcelain, have long died" (Walmir Ayala), or, as well as his objects, have "something ineffable" (José Roberto Teixeira Leite)".
Weydson Barros Leal
"I know how to overcome the dichotomy - almost mandatory in the visual production of the 20th century - among the communicates on a large scale and that has an effectively instigating content".
Olivio Tavares de Araújo
"Reynaldo Fonseca paints the ecstasy and loneliness of the man who is not medieval and Neither cosmic (or contemporary)."
olney krüse
"Let's say that looking at a painting by this painter asks us for a moment of peace, a stop in the vertigo. I am sure that this tranquility will soon be invaded by a perverse concern (conscious or not)."
Walmir Ayala
"It is in the confessed admiration for certain geniuses of other times, in short, that He seeks the key to some of his solutions. Reminds, for example, the red of Van Eyck's character covers as a probable explanation of his fascination with this color."
Walmir Ayala
Bienals and Art Salons
1943 - XLIX National Salon of Fine Arts - Division of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro/RJ
1944 - L National Salon of Fine Arts Modern Art Division, Rio de Janeiro/RJ
1949 - VIII Annual Painting Hall, Recife/PE
1950 - IX Annual Painting Hall, Recife/PE
1951 - LVII National Salon of Fine Arts - Division of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro/RJ
1954 - XIII Annual Painting Hall, Recife/PE
1955 - IV National Salon of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro/RJ
1956 - XV Annual Painting Hall, Recife/PE (1st Prize)
1959 - V São Paulo Biennial Foundation, São Paulo Foundation, São Paulo Paulo/SP
1967 - IX Bienal de São Paulo, Fundação Bienal, São Paulo/SP
1970 - XIX National Salon of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro/RJ.
Fixes
It has works in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, Museum of the State of Pernambuco, Monument of the Independence of Caracas, Mural no Banco do Brasil, in Recife, in the Gilberto Chateaubriand collection and in several other private collections of the Brazil, France, Italy and Spain.
Individual exhibitions
1943
Recife PE - First Individual
1952
Reef PE - Individual
1958
Pernambuco - Individual
Rio de Janeiro - Individual
1971
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the Bonino Gallery
1972
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the Ipanema Art Gallery
1973
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the Ipanema Art Gallery
1974
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the Ipanema Art Gallery
1975
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the Ipanema Art Gallery
1979
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the Ipanema Art Gallery
1988
Recife PE - Individual, at Galeria Estúdio A
1993
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Retrospective Exhibition, at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil
1994
São Paulo SP - Retrospective Exhibition, at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil
1997
Curitiba PR - Individual, at Simões de Assis Galeria de Arte
Recife PE - Reynaldo Fonseca: scratches and scribbles, at Galeria Massangana
2003
Curitiba PR - Individual, at Simões de Assis Galeria de Art
2004
Curitiba PR - Individual, at Simões de Assis Art Gallery
Collective exhibitions
1943
Rio de Janeiro RJ - 49th National Salon of Belas Arts, at the MNBA - Modern Division
1944
Rio de Janeiro RJ - 50th National Salon of Fine Arts, at the MNBA - Modern Division
1949
Recife PE - 8th Annual Salon of Painting, at the Pernambuco State Museum
1950
Recife PE - 9th Annual Painting Hall, at the Pernambuco State Museum
1951
Rio de Janeiro RJ - 57th National Salon of Fine Arts, MNBA - Modern Division
1954
Recife PE - 13th Annual Painting Hall, at the Pernambuco State Museum
1955
Rio de Janeiro RJ - 4th National Salon of Modern Art
1956
Recife PE - 15th Annual Painting Hall, at the Pernambuco State Museum - 1st Prize
1958
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Art Salon The Mother and Child, organized by the Art School of the Brazil
1959
São Paulo SP - 5th São Paulo International Biennial, at the Ciccilo Matarazzo Sobrinho Pavilion
1967
São Paulo SP - 9th São Paulo International Biennial Paulo, at the Biennial Foundation
1970
Rio de Janeiro RJ - 19th National Salon of Modern Art, at MAM/RJ
1972
São Paulo SP - Art/Brazil/Today: 50 years Then, at the Collectio Gallery
1973
São Paulo SP - 5th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1976
São Paulo SP - 8th Panorama of Current Art Brazilian, at MAM/SP
São Paulo SP - the drawing in Pernambuco, at the Nara Roesler Gallery
São Paulo SP - The young design of the 40s, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
1977
Belo Horizonte MG - Collective, Cronos Gallery
Curitiba PR - Collective, at Waldir Simões Gallery
São Paulo SP - 3rd Exhibition of Fine Arts Brazil-Japan
São Paulo SP - 9th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1982
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Universo do Futebol, at MAM/RJ
1983
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian self-portraits, at the Banerj Art Gallery
Rio de Janeiro RJ - small retrospective of the Period 1970-1983, at Galeria Ipanema
1984
São Paulo SP - Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection: Portrait and Self-Portrait of Brazilian Art, at MAM/ SP
São Paulo SP - Tradition and Rupture: Synthesis of Brazilian art and culture, at the Bienal Foundation
1986
Brasília DF - Pernambucanos in Brasília, at the ECT Galeria de Arte
Rio de Janeiro RJ - occupied territory, at EAV/Parque Lage
1987
Rio de Janeiro RJ - To the collector: Homage to Gilberto Chateaubriand, at MAM/RJ
1989
São Paulo SP - Cor de Pernambuco, at Ranulpho Galeria de Art
São Paulo SP - Thirty-three ways to see the world, at Ranulpho Art Gallery
1990
São Paulo SP - Fruits, Flowers and Colors, at Ranulpho Art Gallery
São Paulo SP - Painted Cats, Ranulpho Art Gallery
1991
São Paulo SP - The music in painting, at Ranulpho Art Gallery
São Paulo SP - Chico e os Bichos, at Ranulpho Art Gallery
São Paulo SP - Siron, Reynaldo and Scliar, at Ranulpho Art Gallery
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Eco Art, at MAM/RJ
1993
São Paulo SP - The modern design in Brazil: Gilberto Chateubriand collection, at the gallery of Sesi Art
1994
Rio de Janeiro RJ - The modern design in Brazil: Gilberto Chateubriand Collection, at MAM/RJ
1997
Curitiba PR - Casa Cor Sul, at Simões de Assisi Art Gallery
Recife PE - Project Risks and Doodles, at the Vicente do Rego Monteiro Gallery
1998
São Paulo SP - 5th Salon of Art and Antiques, at Clube Paineiras do Morumby
1999
Curitiba PR - Highlights of Brazilian Painting, at Simões de Assis Art Gallery
2001
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Collection of Carioca Arts, at the Ipanema Art Gallery
São Paulo SP - 8th Salon of Art and Antiques, in the Hebrew
2003
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Autonomy of Drawing, at MAM/RJ
Rio de Janeiro RJ - BrazilianArt Project, at Almacén Galeria de Art
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Treasures of the Caixa: Brazilian modern art in the Caixa collection, in the Caixa Cultural Complex
