Vera Martins (São Paulo SP 1962)
Visual artist.
In 1989, she took the course Trabalhar com Materiais Usados - Escultura, Objeto Encontrado [Working with Used Materials - Sculpture, Found Object] at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo - MAC/USP. The following year, she took part in workshops with Iole de Freitas, Dudi Maia Rosa and Carlos Fajardo. Between 1990 and 1991, she coordinated the workshops Escultura com Sucata [Sculpture with Scrap], Arte e Ilustração Publicitária [Advertising Art and Illustration] and Introdução à Arte Publicitária [Introduction to Advertising Art] at the Oficina Cultural Amácio Mazzaropi. That same year, she studied observational drawing with Carlos Fajardo and took a workshop with Antonio Dias; she also took part in the 18th Salão de Arte Jovem CCBEU [CCBEU Young Art Salon] in Santos. In 1996, she taught painting at the Museu Brasileiro da Escultura - MuBE, in São Paulo, and took part in the group shows Avesso do Avesso [The Reverse of the Reverse], in São Paulo, and O Único, o Mesmo, o A-Fundamento [The Only, the Same, the Un-Foundation], in the same city. In 2000, she was awarded the Bolsa Vitae grant by the Fundação Vitae and took part in the group shows Os Anjos Estão de Volta [The Angels Are Back] and Ars Erótica: Sexo na Arte Brasileira [Ars Erotica: Sex in Brazilian Art], both in São Paulo. The following year, she coordinated workshops with patients at the Hospital Psiquiátrico Pinel and held the solo exhibition Desmaterializando o Suporte da Pintura [Dematerializing the Painting Support] at the Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade, in São Paulo. A year later, she exhibited solo again with Claustro [Cloister] and, in 2007, with Galeria 1500mts.
Critical Commentary
In the early 1990s, Vera Martins developed a series of reliefs on canvas, taking the square as the basis for her compositional and constructive exercises, always combined with an opaque, sober chromatic range. These works originated in the artist's visits to the cemetery of Freguesia do Ó, a neighborhood in the northern part of the city of São Paulo. From these visits, Vera Martins incorporates close observation of the burial niches and their geometric regularity, recorded in numerous photographs, as well as the somber tone of the emotions captured there. Using canvas, fabrics and tempera, the artist builds her poetics by fusing funerary themes with material structure: her geometric shapes, impregnated with pigments in oxidized tones, evoke a feeling of anguish; the saturated chromatic opacity of the canvases alludes to a certain sepulchral darkness; and the weight of the dark tones carries an evocation of absence. In this way, the artist seeks to give plastic form to questions related to feelings of loneliness, incommunicability, religion and sex. As the critic Tadeu Chiarelli observes, the difficulty the artist imposes on herself is to nourish her own work with such questions - feelings of loneliness, repressed sexual impulses, death, etc. - without, however, giving up the possibility of exploring the elements specific to traditional artistic modes, especially those linked to painting and drawing itself. Following the lessons of older Brazilian artists such as Amilcar de Castro and Mira Schendel, Vera Martins understands that it is perfectly possible to interpret any feeling in the world through the operation of plane and line.
Critiques
"Vera Martins's artistic language reflects primordial aspects of the human condition; it speaks of life, sexuality and death, yet without submitting to a narrative slant. Her paintings and sculptures express a potential of signs in a spare, concise way, displacing meanings and articulating them within the plastic questions in which they are placed. These questions, which have recently been increasingly refined, have long been linked above all to old concerns related to death. For a long time she visited cemeteries, especially that of Freguesia do Ó, in São Paulo, persistently photographing the walls lined with juxtaposed burial niches, tiny squares always the same, always regular, in which a small photograph, a name, a candle seek to preserve an identity lost forever".
Stella Teixeira de Barros
MARTINS, Vera. Pinturas e objetos. São Paulo: Valu Oria Galeria de Arte, 1998.
Collections
Colégio Stift Keppel - Hilchenbach (Alemanha)
Escola Antroposófica Rudolf Steiner - Hagen (Alemanha)
Espaço Cultural Banco Central do Brasil - São Paulo SP
Fundação Biblioteca Nacional - Rio de Janeiro RJ
Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Ceará - MAC - Fortaleza CE
Museu de Arte Moderna - MAM/SP - São Paulo SP
Museu Del Barrio - Nova York (Estados Unidos)
Museu Nacional de Belas Artes - MNBA - Rio de Janeiro RJ
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo - Pesp - São Paulo SP
Solo Exhibitions
1991 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Espaço Cultural Chap Chap
1993 - Brasília DF - Solo, at Itaugaleria
1994 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Centro Cultural São Paulo
1998 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Valu Oria Galeria de Arte
2001 - São Paulo SP - Desmaterializando o Suporte da Pintura [Dematerializing the Painting Support] (Resident Artist Project), at Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade
2002 - São Paulo SP - Claustro [Cloister], at Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo
2007 - São Paulo SP - Galeria 1500mts, at Instituto Pensarte
2012 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria Jaqueline Martins
Group Exhibitions
1989 - São Paulo SP - 18th Bunkyo Salon, at Sociedade Brasileira de Cultura Japonesa
1990 - Avaré SP - Avaré Visual Arts Salon
1990 - Araras SP - 26th Araras Salon
1990 - Caraguatatuba SP - Group show, at Centro Cultural Jabaquara
1990 - Limeira SP - 17th Limeira Contemporary Art Salon
1991 - Santos SP - 27th Young Art Salon, at CCBEU
1991 - São Paulo SP - Group show, at Espaço Cultural Banco Central do Brasil
1991 - São Paulo SP - Group show, at Espaço Cultural Cásper Líbero
1992 - Santo André SP - 20th Santo André Contemporary Art Salon, at Paço Municipal
1992 - São Paulo SP - 7th Brazilian Art Salon, at Fundação Mokiti Okada - M.O.A.
1993 - Curitiba PR - 50th Paraná Salon, at Museu de Arte Contemporânea - special jury mention
1993 - Piracicaba SP - 25th Piracicaba Contemporary Art Salon
1993 - Ribeirão Preto SP - 18th Ribeirão Preto Art Salon, at Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto Pedro Manuel-Gismondi - special jury mention
1993 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 13th National Visual Arts Salon, at Palácio Gustavo Capanema - acquisition prize
1993 - São Paulo SP - Brazil: Small Formats, Few Words, at Documenta Galeria de Arte
1993 - Santo André SP - Razão e Mistério [Reason and Mystery], at Paço Municipal
1993 - São Paulo SP - Gunther Prize, at MAC/USP
1994 - New Mexico (United States) - Group show, at The Dartmouth Street Gallery
1994 - Albuquerque (United States) - Arts of the Americas 1994, at Tamarind Institute
1994 - Campinas SP - In Extremis, at Museu de Arte Contemporânea José Pancetti
1994 - Ribeirão Preto SP - 19th Ribeirão Preto Art Salon - special jury mention
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 14th National Visual Arts Salon, at Palácio Gustavo Capanema (Rio de Janeiro, RJ) - acquisition prize
1994 - São Paulo SP - Mirrors and Shadows, at Museu de Arte Moderna
1994 - São Paulo SP - Poéticas Paulistanas: Módulo I [São Paulo Poetics: Module I], at Espaço Cultural Citibank
1994 - São Paulo SP - Annual Visual Arts Exhibition Program, at Centro Cultural São Paulo
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 15th National Visual Arts Salon, at Museu Nacional de Belas Artes
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Mirrors and Shadows, at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil
1995 - Santos SP - 5th Santos National Biennial, at Centro Cultural Patrícia Galvão - guest artist
1996 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Contemporary Art: Recent Donations/96, at Museu de Arte Moderna
1996 - São Paulo SP - Atelier Santa Cecília, at Galeria Múltipla de Arte
1996 - São Paulo SP - Avesso do Avesso [The Reverse of the Reverse], at Paço das Artes
1996 - São Paulo SP - O Único, o Mesmo, o A-Fundamento [The Only, the Same, the Un-Foundation], at Valu Oria Galeria de Arte
1997 - Madrid (Spain) - Arco, at Stad Valu Oria
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Art in the Collection of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo: Recent Donations 1996 - 1998, at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil
1999 - Curitiba PR - 56th Paraná Salon, at Museu de Arte Contemporânea
1999 - Curitiba PR - 5th João Turin Sculpture Show, at Casa João Turin - prize Secretaria of the Estado of the Cultura
1999 - São Paulo SP - Noturnos [Nocturnes], at Acervo do Museu de Arte Moderna - MAM
2000 - Santos SP - 7th Santos National Biennial, at Centro Cultural Patrícia Galvão
2000 - São Paulo SP - Ars Erótica: Sexo e Erotismo na Arte Brasileira [Ars Erotica: Sex and Eroticism in Brazilian Art], at Museu de Arte Moderna
2000 - São Paulo SP - The Angels Are Back, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2001 - Campinas SP - Art in the City - Coca Cola Project, at Centro de Convivência Cultural - Pça Fluminense, Cambuí
2001 - Hagen (Germany) - Frauen Kunst Forum Exchange - at Centro Cultural de Essen and Escola Antroposófica Rudolf Steiner Waldorfschule
2001 - New York (United States) - The Thread Unraveled: Contemporary Brazilian Art, at El Museo del Barrio
2002 - Buenos Aires (Argentina) - The Thread Unraveled: Contemporary Brazilian Art, at Museo de Arte Latino-americano de Buenos Aires
2002 - Madrid (Spain) - Arco/2002
2002 - São Paulo SP - Genius Loci: o Espírito do Lugar [Genius Loci: The Spirit of Place], in the streets of the Vila Buarque neighborhood
2002 - São Paulo SP - Line as the Structure of Form, at Espaço MAM - Villa-Lobos
2002 - São Paulo SP - O Orgânico em Colapso [The Organic in Collapse], at Valu Oria Galeria de Arte
2005 - São Paulo SP - Group show, at Estrela do Pari Futebol Clube
2005 - São Paulo SP - Erótica: os Sentidos na Arte [Erotica: The Senses in Art], at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil
2005 - São Paulo SP - Ocupação [Occupation], at Paço das Artes
2006 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Erótica: os Sentidos na Arte [Erotica: The Senses in Art], at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil
2006 - São Paulo SP - Clube da Gravura 20th Anniversary Celebration, at MAM/SP
2009 - São Paulo SP - Poética Têxtil [Textile Poetics], at Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade
2009 - São Paulo SP - SP-Arte - d'concept
2010 - São Paulo SP - SP-Arte - d'concept
2011 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Art Prize 2011, at Funarte
2011 - São Paulo SP - SP-Arte - d'concept
Source: Itaú Cultural
