SCHEDULED FOR THE HOLIDAY September 7 at the Marcos Amaro Art Factory (FAMA) in Itu, the international seminar Art as a Construction of Worlds brings together four professionals who will present to the public the richness and diversity of artists suffering from psychological distress. in Brazil and worldwide – linked to the movement initially coined by the French painter Jean Dubufett as Art Brut, also known as Art Outsider. The guests debate about beauty and strength in the work of asylum artists. The meeting is held by FAMA–Marcos Amaro Art Factory, is supported by Galeria Estação and organized by 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 the cell where he lived, which will be open to the public for visitation in Rio de Janeiro.
Elisabeth Telsnig, curator and PhD in Art History, is one of the participants who discuss the subject. Representative of the work of Austrian artist Josef Hofer, she will comment on her production in a social organization for people with physical and intellectual disabilities in Ried, Austria where she met Hofer in 1997. In addition, she will discuss the artist’s work and intend to speak about the convergence between his works and those of the artist Egon Schiele. “Today, Hofer is considered an Art Brut classic and his works are represented around the world in major collections and museums,” she points out.
French curator Savine Faupin, responsible for Art Brut at the Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Art Brut de Lille, France, will reflect on the subject from Dubuffet. The institution of which it is part owns the artist’s Art Brut collection, with over 3500 works donated in 1999.
Author of the book The inside out of the imagination: contemporary art and psychoanalysis (Cosac Naify, 2013) and curator of the exhibition Lugares do Delírio (Rio and Sesc Pompeia Art Museum), psychoanalyst Tania Rivera intends to present her research around her work. article about Arthur Bispo do Rosário published in the recent issue 37 of the magazine Arte & Ensaios, 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 “suspend the romanticization veil of the figure of Arthur Bispo do Rosário as a mad and marginal genius”. This tendency, according to her, ends up “naturalizing her condition as a pathology and hide your immigrant status, poor and black ”.
Also about the artist, the doctor and director of the Bispo do Rosário Contemporary Art Museum, Raquel Fernandes, will report
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 for socializing mediated by art and culture”. Fernandes should talk about the works of the museum, which is inside the Juliano Moreira Municipal Health Care Institute, in Rio de Janeiro, and offers patients and residents of the surrounding area an art school.
The seminar was conceived as part of the necessary reflection around the Bispo do Rosário, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He has had his works exhibited in numerous national and international exhibitions, including the São Paulo Biennial, and now opens an important retrospective in Itu, at FAMA. Bispo do Rosário: things in the world are curated by Ricardo Resende, who will be the seminar’s mediator. “Bispo’s selection of works observed the gesture of serializing, organizing and multiplying as an artistic practice, as seen in the textile industry, when the workers ‘produced’ the things that would be used in daily life,” writes Resende in curatorial text. Simultaneous exhibitions of Pola Fernandez (winner of the Institution’s Occupation Notice) unfold in the FAMA space, with works produced during residency at the Bispo do Rosário Museum, and a collective of artists with works that talk to Bishop: Carmela’s production. 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 9 the Galeria Estação opens, in São Paulo, exhibitions by Brazilian Fernando Diniz and Austrian Josef Hofer. Deceased in March 1999, Diniz was, for Mário Pedrosa, an artist with a decorative force that never disarmed. The artist attended the Occupational Therapy Section (STO) of the Pedro II Psychiatric Center. STO was founded by Nise da Silveira to stimulate patients’ expression skills. The show, curated by Luiz Carlos Mello and Eurípedes Junior, cuts out the 30,000 pieces produced by the artist. Diniz’s exhibition is an institutional partnership with the Unconscious Images Museum (MII). For the first time in Brazil, Josef Hofer will have an individual at Galeria Estação, curated by Elisabeth Telsnig.
The Austrian–born deaf and mute artist had his work and history known as gallery director Vilma Eid 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, 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 also market, there is even a fair”, she comments.
