Exhibition "ARL Life and Work"

The exposure "ARL Life and Work“, by Brazilian photographer and painter Antônio Roseno de Lima (1926-1998), goes on display at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil Rio de Janeiro on September 04, 2024. With free visits, this is an opportunity for the public to get to know the artist's production outsiders, Born in Alexandria, RN, who migrated to São Paulo and found art as a way to express himself. Semi-literate and living on the outskirts of Campinas, ARL, how he decided to sign his works, affirming his identity as a citizen, was discovered at the end of the 1980s by the plastic artist and PhD professor at the UNICAMP Institute of Arts, Geraldo Porto, who signs the curated the exhibition. The exhibition brings together more than 90 works, the vast majority of them paintings, the main medium used by the artist. Three 3D reproductions are also available to the public, facilitating accessibility for people with visual impairments. The exhibition, which has already been shown at CCBBs SP, BH and DF, will be at CCBB Rio until October 3th, ending its season.

The painter took inspiration from his own reality to create works that are a reflection of the purest and most enchanting Art Brut, French term, created by Jean Dubuffet, to designate art produced free from the influence of official styles and impositions of the art market, which often uses unprecedented and unlikely materials and techniques. His central themes were self-portraits, jaguars, cows, roosters, drunks, women and presidents. Despite the precarious conditions in which he lived in the Três Marias favela, in Campinas (where he lived from 1962 until his death in June 1998), Roseno expressed his dreams and everyday observations through his paintings, often using improvised materials found in the trash. : pieces of cans, cardboard, wood and synthetic enamel remains.

When he found a design that he liked, he cut it into cans of various sizes to use as a model, in addition to using other materials he found along the way, such as wool, more available in cold weather. His shack was his canvas, where vibrant colors and figures outlined in black came to life, revealing a unique visual poetry. In the works, the artist's diverse aspirations are represented, but one of them is repeated throughout his art: “I wanted to be a little bird to see the whole world!"

In bold colors, he wrote on the boards: “This design was founded in 1961“, referring to the beginning of his career in drawing, painting and photography, with a “spanish teacher“, in São Paulo. Even though he was semi-literate, words were always part of his poetic expression, like hermetic signs, displayed respecting the anteriority of the figures and showing a lack of knowledge of grammatical rules. Friends and children from the favela helped him with reading and taking notes in a notebook, which were photocopied to be pasted on the back of the pictures. The notes, full of information in the most diverse letters, informed about the materials, creation process, execution, conservation of the painting and concluded: “Whoever gets this drawing will keep it with care. You can wash. You just can't scratch it. It's for children and grandchildren. Having zeal, lasts half a century. "

Impressed by the uniqueness of Roseno's work, curator Geraldo Porto says that the first time he saw his paintings was in a collective exhibition of primitivist artists at the Centro de Convivência Cultural de Campinas, in 1988. “At that moment, I was sure I was in front of a rare artist“. He adds that the painter already stood out among the others. After gaining notoriety, he became “called by journalists the 'pop painter of the favela', – making reference to Pop Art, an American movement from the sixties – because his paintings mixed images, photographs, advertisements and words as in commercial posters“, explains Porto, adding that Antônio Roseno was unaware not only of this, but of any other artistic movement, but wanted to see his work in outdoors of the city.

As a way of refuting reports at the time, which showed him as a slum dweller, illiterate and sick, he began to write on his boards in bold letters: “I am a very intelligent man“, in order to get rid of these negative images. ARL lived with Soledade, his great companion in life, and despite his wife's devotion, the artist insisted on repeating in his work: “I never had love in my life“, regardless of the almost four decades of relationship that the two maintained.

In 1991 Geraldo curated ARL's first solo exhibition, at the contemporary art gallery Casa Triângulo, by Ricardo Trevisan, in São Paulo. Soon after, a German television broadcast a story about Roseno, broadcast in Europe during Documenta in Kassel, one of the largest and most important exhibitions of contemporary art and international modern art that takes place every five years in the city of Kassel, Germany. The Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo recommended its exhibition as one of the best of the season. His works today appear in world-renowned publications. Roseno passed away in 1998, when a good part of his works were already in art collections in Brazil and abroad. Unfortunately, another large part was discarded by the city hall truck, called by the family to clean the house.
Just like Arthur Bispo do Rosário, ARL is part of these “virgin artists" or "outsiders“, authors of this “unusual art“. For Geraldo Porto, Antônio Roseno “He is an outsider artist, due to the originality of his creative process. His creativity knew no boundaries between photographing, painting or writing. Illiterate, he wrote; photographer, he painted; painter, he weaved. He painted so he wouldn’t get sick.” He portrayed everyday life, simple things that made him happy. “I asked him why he painted so many cows: 'Because I really like milk', he replied.".

Pieces of the soul and life

With the aim of unveiling the different layers of Antônio Roseno de Lima's work, the exhibition that will occupy the second floor of CCBB Rio, is divided into six sections, presenting a complete overview of the artist's various facets. In the first of them, “The Drunk“, we glimpse ARL’s roots in his art, in which flat colors stand out and there are no halftones or chiaroscuro effects, and the use of words proliferates. Started in 1975, this series features faces with eyes blurred by drink, a work that projected him as an artist on the international market, becoming his trademark. In "City Clippings“, we delve into the artist’s aspirations and fantasies, where we see him printed on banknotes (out of circulation); the beautiful, colorful house with electric lights; the modern building and the factory where he longed to work.

In the section “Presidents" historical facts and notable figures such as Afonso Pena, Nilo Peçanha, Getúlio Vargas, Mário de Andrade and Santos Dumont, his greatest idol (the one who probably inspired his desire to be a bird), appear. Already in “The photographer“, we have reflections of his great passion, the craft he learned to practice at the age of 35, in São Paulo, capital, and tried to keep alive in the interior (Indaiatuba), even after closing his studio due to lack of resources. “Fruits, Flowers and Animals” bring compositions of roosters, frogs, horses, cats, capybaras and jaguars or even paintings with almost “picassians” of cows. “Women and Saints” completes the tour of the creative soul of Roseno, an admirer who liked to portray women, and who continued to pay homage to them in the form of mermaids or the image of Our Lady of Aparecida.

In addition, the exhibition will also feature two installations. In "Photo Santo Antônio“, images are projected onto loop, forming a video with different photographs taken by Roseno, most of them in black and white and others with his hand-colored interventions. In fact, most of his photographs are now in the Memory Center of the State University of Campinas – UNICAMP. In "ARL Animated“, around 20 works were reimagined here by Nélio Costa. The images, created from the dismemberment and transformation of elements from the original works, respect the integrity of Antônio's work. Each selected work received personalized treatment, resulting in a unique experience for viewers, who will be able to appreciate the artistic production from a new perspective.

As part of its social inclusion program, aiming to guarantee access to a greater number of visitors, the exhibition features QR Codes on the identification cards of all its paintings, enabling audio description of each of them. Another accessibility initiative is the tactile reading of three screens that are reproduced in MDF, with different textures: “Drunk with a Cigarette I” (1986), which features one of the most emblematic representations of Roseno's career, a man with three rows of ears, eyebrows, eyes, noses and mouths, each with a cigarette between his lips, “The Rooster is the Husband of the Hen I” and "Pineapple" (both undated), which are also among the artist's most recurring themes.

From the “ARL Vida e Obra” exhibition, the public will be able to get to know who Antônio was, one of five brothers, born in 1926, in the city of Alexandria (RN), who at the age of 22 decided to leave the countryside to live in the city, helping his godmother to produce and sell sweets. At the age of 30, he left his marriage to Cosma, with whom he had five children, to seek a better life in São Paulo. There he dedicated himself to photography, before settling in the Três Marias favela, in 1962, where he produced most of his work.

Despite claiming that he never found love, he lived next to Soledade, a community leader, to whom he dedicated all the greatest care. A friend with whom he fought and made up, his company in joy, but especially in moments of poor health. Due to difficulties and public ignorance during his lifetime, Roseno's work, which summarizes his story, gained international recognition, with his works being exhibited in renowned museums around the world. A legacy that inspires and moves us to this day.

Service
Exhibitions | ARL Life and Work
From September 04nd to October 28th
Wednesday to Monday, from 9 am to 20 pm