Tag Archives: brazil

There is much more to art in London than the National Gallery, the Royal Academy, the Tate, the Courtauld, etc.

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THE NATIONAL GALLERY, the Tate Galleries (Britain and Modern), the Wallace Collection, Kenwood House, The Courtauld, the Royal Academy, the Barbican Gallery, the Hayward Gallery, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Dulwich Art Gallery, and the Victoria and Albert Museum are all well-known places in London where art lovers can view fine pictures and other artworks. However, these are only the tip of the iceberg. London has a huge number of less well-known places where great art can be enjoyed.

By Paulo Nimer Pjota

First, there are the commercial art galleries, many of them, but not all, in Mayfair. Among those which I visit often are Thaddeus Ropac, Annely Juda Fine Art, Pace, David Zwirner, Waddington Custot, White Cube (both in Mayfair and Bermondsey), Beers London (near the Barbican), Lisson Gallery, Gagosian, Richard Greene, Grosvenor, Hause & Wirth, Victoria Miro, and Goodmans. There are others, but those listed are the ones I visit most. At these locations, modern and contemporary art can be viewed and, if you have plenty of spare cash, purchased.

Other interesting places to view art of all types and from all eras are the auction houses. Christies, Sotheby’s, Bonhams, and Phillips, all in Mayfair, hold exhibitions of art works that are going to be auctioned. Many of these pieces have been offered for sale by private collectors or their descendants, and have never been seen by the public. Seeing them prior to the auction is a precious experience because many of them will return to private collectors after the auction, and will once again be hidden from general view.

Another place that deserves visitors is the South London Gallery in Peckham Road, London SE5 8UH. Part of the former Camberwell School of Art, it has an annex nearby in a former fire station. Today, 24 July 2026, we visited an exhibition, “Encantados”, which was a collection of paintings by the Brazilian artist Paulo Nimer Pjota, who was born in 1988.

Pjota’s intricately executed, colourful paintings hang in the gallery’s large rectangular space. The wall space between, above, and below the paintings contain drawings, which were specially executed for the show by the artist. Thus, the whole room, paintings and walls, has been transformed into an artwork. The large paintings are populated with depictions of mythical creatures and fantastic plant forms. Although occasionally weird, the paintings are generally joyous, and uplifting to behold. The exhibition continues until 23 August 2026, and should not be missed.

By confining oneself to the best-known venues listed in the first paragraph, one will certainly see great art, but will miss hidden gems such as the pictures I saw today at the South London Gallery.

A wonderful film from Brazil

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WE HAVE JUST WATCHED a superb film from Brazil, “I am still here”. It was released in 2024 and has deservedly just won an Oscar for being ‘the best foreign film’.

Sensitively and beautifully, it charts the catastrophic life of a family after one of its members is kidnapped during Brazil’s military dictatorship (mid-1960s until the 1980s). This film based on the life of one of those who was ‘disappeared’ by the military authorities, Rubens Paiva (1929-1971), is both terrifying and moving. Each character in the film acts perfectly. This is docu-drama at its best.

This great ‘movie’ is well worth watching.

The azulejo tiling of Portugal is moving onwards

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ONE OF THE CHARMING aspects of Portuguese culture is the use of the mainly blue and white decorative tiling known as ‘azulejo’. It can be found in Portugal and wherever else the Portuguese had colonies. One of the former colonies was Brazil. It was there that the artist Adriana Varejão was born in 1964 (in Rio de Janeiro). Today (the 11th of October 2024), at the Frieze Masters art show in London’s Regents Park, we saw a fine exhibition of her works in the booth set up by the Victoria Miro Gallery.

It was fascinating to see how Adriana subverts the azulejo, which was introduced to what is now Brazil by its Portuguese conquerors. Clearly inspired by the traditional tiling, her works both refer to it and distort the technique to create attractive, imaginative artworks that allude to the distortive effects of colonialism on indigenous culture.

I love seeing traditional azulejo. Seeing Adriana’s work was particularly enjoyable given that, to use a well-worn expression, ‘I know where she is coming from’. And I like the way that she has been moving the age-old art of azulejo into pastures new.

A Brazilian artist and the River Ganges at Varanasi

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MARINA RHEINGANTZ IS an artist whose works I had never seen until today, the 31st of October 2023. Her exhibition, “Maré”, which means ‘tide’ in Portuguese, is on at the White Cube Gallery in London’s Masons Yard until the 11th of November 2023. Most of the exhibits are painting, but there are also an embroidery and a tapestry.

Marina was born in 1983 at Araraquara in Brazil. She lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. The works on display at White Cube tend towards being abstract, but they are not completely devoid of naturalistic content. As the gallery’s handout explained:

“Guided by observations of tidal rhythms, ocean beds and meteorological conditions, Rheingantz infuses landscapes of water with a quasi-sentient vitality … Expansive in scale and richly textured, Rheingantz’s landscapes deconstruct topography into its loosest arrangements.”

Although separated from him by many years, Marina’s paintings are almost as atmospheric as the great JMW Turner’s most impressionistic works. However, she has gone further than Turner in her almost abstract depiction of natural phenomena.

For example, this is evident in two paintings (detail from one of them above) she created following a recent visit to Varanasi (‘Benares’) on the Ganges River in India. These depict in an impressionistic way the orange embers that bodies being cremated on the burning ghats spit out onto the surface of the river. Other pictures on display express her perceptions of places as far afield as Brazil, Mexico, and Morrocco.

Not far from Piccadilly and the Royal Academy, White Cube Masons Yard is well worth a visit, It would be a shame to miss viewing the artworks created by Ms Rheingantz.