Exhibition "Almir Mavignier — Determined Chance"

The exposure Almir Mavignier — a determined chanceBased on a critical reading by Luiz Armando Bagolin, the exhibition presents a journey where art, perception, and existence intersect. The show begins with the pivotal experience of the painting studio created in 1946 at the Engenho de Dentro National Psychiatric Center, stemming from the encounter between Almir Mavignier and Nise da Silveira. There, painting emerged as a space for refuge, expression, and inner reorganization for artists such as Emygdio de Barros, Raphael Domingues, Carlos Pertuis, Fernando Diniz, and Isaac Liberato.

This initial core reveals an essential dimension of the exhibition: art as a vital necessity. In the studio, Mavignier worked without interfering with the form of the works, respecting the inherent strength of each image. The works produced in that context did not arise from a pre-existing aesthetic program, but from an internal urgency, from an order constructed by the very act of seeing, feeling, and painting.

Alongside these works, the exhibition traces Mavignier's trajectory towards the construction of a rigorous and investigative language. His time in Europe, especially at the Ulm School, deepened his research on color, grid, repetition, system, and perception. In his pointillist paintings, permutations, posters, and later series, the artist transforms the image into a field of visual experimentation, where small variations produce movement, vibration, and surprise.

The exhibition thus brings together two distinct paths: on the one hand, the image that arises from an intense subjective experience; on the other, the image constructed through rational systems, calculation, method, and variation. What unites these two universes is not a simple formal similarity, but a common question: how does an image gain its own power, beyond the direct will of its author?

Between the studio and the spiral, between intuition and system, between gesture and rule, the exhibition reveals art as a form of knowledge and as a mode of existence. As Mavignier stated, "art is a solution for existing"—and it is precisely this vital dimension that runs throughout the entire show.

Text developed from the critical essay by Luiz Armando Bagolin.

Exhibition | Almir Mavignier — a determined chance
From the 21th of May to the 15rd of August
Monday to Friday from 10am to 19pm and Saturdays from 10am to 13pm.