Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Semblantes, sd, embroidery, sewing, writing, collection Museu Bispo do Rosário Contemporary Art

Scheduled for the September 7th holiday at the Marcos Amaro Art Factory (FAMA), in Itu, the international seminar Art as world building brings together four professionals who will present to the public the wealth and diversity of artists with psychic suffering in Brazil and in the world – linked to the movement initially coined by the French painter Jean Dubufett as Art Brut, also known as Outsider Art. The guests discuss the beauty and strength in the work of asylum artists. The meeting is held by FAMA-Fábrica de Arte Marcos Amaro, with the support of Galeria Estação and the organization of ARTE!Brasileiros.

The opening of the seminar will have speeches by Marcos Amaro and Raquel Fayad, respectively president and director of FAMA. Amaro, who is a businessman, collector and artist, has been systematically investing in the preservation and recovery of spaces at the service of contemporary art and culture. Its foundation participates in the recovery of the collection of the artist Bispo do Rosário and of the cell where he lived, which will be open to the public for visitation in Rio de Janeiro.

Elisabeth Telsnig, curator and doctor in Art History, is one of the participants who discuss the subject. Representative of the work of the Austrian artist Josef Hofer, she will comment on his production at a social organization for people with physical and intellectual disabilities in Ried, the city in Austria where he met Hofer in 1997. In addition, she will discuss the artist's work and intend to talk about the convergence between his works and those of the artist Egon Schiele. “Today, Hofer is considered a 'classic' of Art Brut and his works are represented all over the world in important collections and museums”, she points out.

Post-doctoral student at the Department of Philosophy at the University of São Paulo, Solange de Oliveira has a degree in Visual Arts and Philosophy and a PhD in Social Psychology. With Savine Faupin (responsible for Art Brut at the Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Art Brut de Lille) absent from the seminar, Solange joins the conversation table to talk about Art Brut, Dubuffet and the Collection de l'Art Brut de Lausanne. She is responsible for extension courses such as Paradoxes of the Outsider Art Field, from Jean Dubuffet to Roger Cardinal at USP and studies the artist outsider American Judith Scott.

author of the book The reverse of the imaginary: contemporary art and psychoanalysis (Cosac Naify, 2013) and curator of the exhibition Delirium places (Museu de Arte do Rio and Sesc Pompeia), the psychoanalyst Tania Rivera intends to present the research around her article about Arthur Bispo do Rosário published in the recent issue 37 of the Arte & Ensaios magazine, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) . PhD in Psychology and professor at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF), Tania seeks, in this research, “to lift the veil of romanticizing the figure of Arthur Bispo do Rosário as a crazy and marginal genius”. This tendency, according to her, ends up “naturalizing his condition as a pathology and hiding his condition as an immigrant, poor and black”.

Also about the artist, the doctor and director of the Museu Bispo do Rosário Arte Contemporânea, Raquel Fernandes, will report on the institution’s work “with its collection and how its actions unfold beyond the galleries, in a relationship with its territory, which aim to establish new possibilities of conviviality mediated by art and culture”. Fernandes should talk about the works of the museum, which is located inside the Juliano Moreira Municipal Health Assistance Institute, in Rio de Janeiro, and offers an art school to patients and surrounding residents.

The seminar was conceived as part of the necessary reflection around Bispo do Rosário, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He has already had his works exhibited in numerous national and international exhibitions, including the Bienal de São Paulo, and now he opens an important retrospective in Itu, at FAMA. Bispo do Rosário: the things of the world is curated by Ricardo Resende, who will mediate the seminar. “Bishop's selection of works observed the gesture of serializing, organizing and multiplying as an artistic practice, as seen in the textile industry, when workers were the ones who 'produced' the things that would be used in everyday life”, writes Resende in the curatorial text . In the space of FAMA, simultaneous exhibitions by Pola Fernandez (winner of the institution’s Occupancy Notice) unfold, with works produced during a residency at the Bispo do Rosário Museum, and a collective of artists with works that speak to Bispo’s production: Carmela Gross, Louise Bourgeois, Nazareth Pacheco and Sonia Gomes.

As part of the seminar program and for a better appreciation of the density and uniqueness of these artists, on September 9th, Galeria Estação opens, in São Paulo, exhibitions by the Brazilian Fernando Diniz and the Austrian Josef Hofer. Died in March 1999, Diniz was, for Mário Pedrosa, an artist endowed with a decorative force that never disarmed. The artist attended the Occupational Therapeutics Section (STO) of the Pedro II Psychiatric Center. STO was founded by Nise da Silveira to stimulate patients' expression skills. The exhibition, curated by Luiz Carlos Mello and Eurípedes Junior, takes a look at the approximately 30 pieces produced by the artist. Diniz's exhibition is an institutional partnership with the Museum of Images of the Unconscious (MII).


For the first time in Brazil, Josef Hofer will have a solo show at Galeria Estação, curated by Elisabeth Telsnig. The artist, deaf and dumb, born in Austria, had his work and his history known by Vilma Eid, gallery director, on trips to the United States and Europe. In 2018, she went to see Telsnig's work in front of the representation of Hofer's work and, at this moment, she decided to show the artist's work to the Brazilian public. For her, it is important to foster interest in Art Brut in Brazil. “In Europe there is interest and there is also a market, there is even a fair”, she comments.


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