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| Arthur Luiz Piza | |||
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Biography | Solo
Exhibitions | Public
Exhibitions | Group Exhibitions Biography S ince settling in Paris, in the 1950’s Arthur Luiz Piza has played a decisive role in disseminating Brazilian art in Europe. During his career of almost sixty years, he has shown in biennials (Sao Paulo, Paris, Venice, Tokyo, Havana, Puerto Rico and Krakow) and the Kassel Documenta, as well as numerous solo exhibitions at leading institutions in America, Asia and Europe. However, his creative work takes root in his original culture. Piza admits to be somewhat of a “prospector” who experiments with a range of colours, shapes and materials, resulting in a body of work that is tactile and invites close scrutiny. Engraving stands as a major feature of Arthur Piza’s oeuvre and a language that he has exploited with a degree of refinement rarely equalled in its six-century-long history. This dominance has precluded the analysis and subsequent recognition of the poetics of his reliefs-a poetics that is just as sensitive as it is effective in conveying subtle issues. We shall attempt to identify herein the reasons behind this overshadowing. In the 1940’s, Piza’s early training as a painter under guidance of Antonio Gomide, soon followed by his devotion to graphic works, established for him the stereotyped image of a painter-engraver. The aesthetic identification of his work with a figuration informed by the post-surrealism of “art informel” of the early 1950’s, the time when he moved to Paris and was tutored by Friedlaender, coincided with his enduring devotion to aquatint, aquafortis and the burin. His innovative work with metal engraving, his chromatic genius and the high standards of excellence he attained for his work, all contributed to the critics’ view of Piza as an engraver to the detriment of (the importance of) his work as a sculptor. Before his first reliefs marked a new stage in his oeuvre in 1958, the forces of a dual history of art had already influenced his work: one of his homeland, Brazil, and the other of France, his country by adoption. This twofold pressure was inevitable, since Piza’s work belongs to both of these worlds. From the early 1950’s, Brazilian artists had been struggling against the dogma of the figure and although, somewhat on the sidelines of fashionable abstract informalism, they constituted a small but influential Constructivist trend that lent new weight to art in Brazil, with strategic consequences for its entire development subsequently. France and several other European countries experienced the same polarisation, though without the same impact of a body of art being constituted in a young and peripheral nation. The art scene thoroughly dominated by Art Informel (Tachisme)-and particularly by artists such as Wols (who died young in 1951 ), Hartung, Soulages, Vedova and the Cobra group-counterbalanced by a late version of Consturctivism derived from the 1936 program that Van Doesburg published in his Art Concret manifesto. There were many similarities between European Concrete art and the movement that initially germinated in Sao Paulo and went on to attract supporters in Rio de Janeiro. Throughout this period, however, Piza explored engraving with the use of a language that was still strongly influenced by post-surrealist figuration. Beginning in 1957, his work began to incorporate a synthesis of the dichotomy involving “art informel” and constructivism. This synthesis was certainly an unusual and disconcerting one, imperceptible even for observers whose aesthetic judgement was informed by pre-established doctrines. The refinement, beauty and elegance of his engraving do not conceal his attempt to reach a compromise between the demands of rationalism and the notion of freedom that was so dear to him from his figurative experience and the recognised, although remote, influences of Miro and Klee. Even though to date his engravings bear memories of this point in his development, it was in his reliefs that a new poetics acquired independence and materialised in the clearest coexistence between freedom and the need for order. Around 1958, the artist’s abandonment of post-surrealist figuration in favour of an abstract language coincided with his first reliefs. They engaged in intense dialogue with engravings-a conversation that is still present in his more recent works, although less intensively than before. The engraving technique Piza then developed entails sculptural work with copper templates to attain the carefully wrought results of his poetics. The elements of this poetics resulted from the shape of the artist instrument itself and were dominated by a lyrical power far removed from the doctrinaire lines of the Constructivism in vogue in Brazil at the time. Piza required thicker copper plates and had special tools made to replace traditional instruments such as the burin. He also used a small goldsmith’s hammer to sculpt low reliefs that became high reliefs when printed on paper and he modified the traditional method of engraving on metal to meet the needs of his language poetics. His impressive artistic results that pinpointed and revealed a cross between antipodal currents-informal lyrical abstraction and constructivist geometry-were inhabited by the refined technical quality, which engravers and those who appreciate engraving always champion in their discussion of technical details, rather than aesthetic analysis. Marcello Mattos Araujo 1958 Museum of Modern Art, Sao Paulo Solomon Guggenhiem Museum, 1951 Sao Paulo Biennale, Brazil 1957 Biennale for Graphics, Tokyo 1957 International Show of Graphics, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia 1958 Triennale Grechen, Switzerland 1959 Dokumenta II, Kassel 1960 Salon Realities Nouvelles, Paris (since 1960) Salon de Mai, Paris Museum, Bezalel, Jerusalem 1961 Relief”, Galerie Xxeme Siecle, Paris Biennale Paris Stedeljk Museum, Amsterdam Triennale Grechen, Switzerland 1962 Ecole de Paris, Galerie Charpentier Kristianstads Museum, Sweden 1963 Biennale Paris 1964 “Fifty Years of Collage” St. Etienne Art Museum and the Museum of Decorative Arts, Paris“ Contemporary Graphics by Young Artists”, Musee Galliera 1966 Biennale von Cracow, Poland Venice Biennale 1967 Couver Print International 1968 “Art Vivant”, Foundation Maeght, Paris Comparaison, Paris Biennale von Menton, France |
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