Timeheads (curated by Thais Darzé) Mario Cravo Júnior

19/10/2019 - 21/12/2019

Galeria Leme/AD is pleased to announce the “Mario Cravo Júnior – Timeheads” exhibition, in yet another partnership with the Salvador-based Paulo Darzé Galeria. The exhibition presents a collection of works, mostly from the 1980s, created with materials salvaged from the 1984 Mercado Modelo fire in Salvador, Bahia.

Mario Cravo Júnior, one of the foremost Brazilian artists and a pioneer of Modernism in Bahia, provides us with a peculiar perspective in a unique theme: sculptures of heads – exclusively. These pieces, patiently acquired by Paulo and Thais Darzé over the course of several years, form the basis of this precious collection.

By placing Cravo Júnior’s “Heads” series in a temporal context – thus furnishing the exhibition’s title, “Timeheads” – we are led to reflect upon the “devouring” of the old by the new – a continued process of effacement which is often overlooked. In these pieces, Cravo denounces the effects of time on lands that refuse to acknowledge their past.

The iconographic presence of Afro-Brazilian art, common in the artist’s milieu, recurs throughout Cravo Júnior’s oeuvre, consequence of his social life. This is an artist whose “African truth” can take on disconcerting dimensions. These pieces, many of which depict Exus (messenger spirits associated with African and Afro-Latino religions), possess the same disquieting profundity found in African sculpture.

Mario Cravo Júnior can also be considered a catalytic and socializing agent whose body of work deals with issues of identity while formally integrating Brazilian particularities with the universalities championed by the avant-garde movement. These heads embody a rite of passage of sorts, they mark the emancipation of a genuinely Brazilian and Bahian art.

 

About the artist:

Mario Cravo Júnior. Salvador, BA, Brazil, 1923 – 2018.

Sculptor, engraver, draughtsman and professor, Mario Cravo Júnior studied at Syracuse University, United States. The artist participated in the 26th and 30th Venice Biennale, 8 editions of the Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, 4th International Exhibition of Contemporary Sculpture at the Rodin Museum in Paris (1971); 1st Tokyo International Biennial Exhibition (1957); among countless exhibitions.

His work is present in several collections, such as: Museum of Modern Art – MoMA, New York, USA; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; Walker Art Center, Minnesota, USA; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte de São Paulo – MASP, São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo – MAM SP, São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro – MAM Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Instituto Moreira Salles, Brazil; Museu Afro Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte da Bahia, Salvador, Brazil; Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia – MAM-BA, Salvador, Brazil; Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil, among others.

 

Click here for the exhibition preview.