Page 119 - ARTE!Brasileiros #40

4 | 1 ) BERGER, J. (1973) MODOS DE VER. SÃO PAULO ROCCO (1999). 2) IN-OUT the personal and lyrical elements of his work. It all emerges more
(ANTROPOFAGIA), 1973/74, DURATION 8’27’’ densely in the second volume (1981-1989), when Leonilson emerges
with Geração 80 [Generation 80], comprised of artists from FAAP-
BOOKS CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ | PAGES 82 TO 85 Fundação Álvares Penteado, in São Paulo, where Leonilson studied
for some time, and the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage, in
THE JUMP IN THE ABYSS: Rio de Janeiro. His brief existence, with an amount of resources
at stake, became a reference for many emerging artists.
LEONILSON’S ADVENTURE But how is his art being seen by other generations? Leonilson’s
creative energy, the essence of his work that promotes the
demolition of linear art and the substitution by the production in
WITH OVER 4,000 WORKS, THE ARTIST’S CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ mosaic contaminates many artists, whether young or not.
GIVES THE DIMENSION OF HIS FRENETIC PRODUCTION Figuration, a characteristic of his production, brings a variety
of changes in language that are enriched with the introduction
BY LEONOR AMARANTE of sewing, embroidery, buttons, and semiprecious stones. This
universe is familiar to Leonilson, son of a fabric merchant and
GREATNESS, fugacity, lapses of dreams, conflict and the a housewife whom he watched sew. The word, embroidered in
ideas in constant motion give the epic dimension of the work colorful fabrics, emerges naturally, inspired in the frail human
of José Leonilson Bezerra and his existential adventure. The condition, pain, truth, solitude, incommunicability.
artist’s catalogue raisonné, with over 3,400 works distributed In this period, he takes part in the São Paulo Biennial in 1985, and
in three volumes, show us the “jump in the abyss” he proposed in the emblematic 1989 exhibition Anotações de Viagem, at Luisa
to accomplish. Strina gallery, in São Paulo, in which he confronts the relationship
The size of the publication seems disproportional for a young between art, image and concept. In this moment, he reinforces the
artist, who died at 36, in 1993. Twelve years of uninterrupted work presence of organic shapes in his drawings and paintings, very
are shown as a tonal analogous to his emotional life. Leonilson close to the cartography of the body.
produced frantically, around 300 works per year, involved in a “trip” The third volume (1990-1993) is marked by the disease and the
between reality and his dreams as a libertarian, restless artist. adaptation to a new reality which is gradually assimilated by the
The set of works is filled with silences, small narratives to which real, transforming his strongest work in the acceptance of his
access is denied, but afford a diachronic view of the different biography. His expressions become more complex and blood stains
phases, techniques, themes, languages, connected by his life and appear, along with drawings of medical procedures, in a kind of
surroundings. The visual, poetic, and intellectualized discourse, eruption of a new cosmic feeling.
filled with tensions, has the merit of adjusting drawing to the In the year of his death, two simultaneous exhibitions are
historical dimension, provoking its rebirth and transforming it conducted, one at São Paulo gallery and the other at Thomas
into poetry. Cohn Arte Contemporânea. Still in 1993, the artist designs his last
Leonilson understands painting as an open field for powerful work: Instalação sobre Duas Figuras, at Capela do Morumbi, which
sensuous experimentations, which may pulse with thick strokes he did not see by himself. With white, light fabrics, Leonilson said
impregnated with expressionism, but also by more gentle, synthetic goodbye with and installation that could be a tribute to himself
gestures. His communication code is accomplished in the projection and to all the artificial paradises he experienced.
of seduction, in the sensorial experience between him and the
viewer. His aesthetic impulses charged with biographical and 1 | SEM TÍTULO (1991), LEONILSON. ACRYLIC ON CANVAS
fictional contents, news mixed to episodes of his private life,
extend along drawings, paintings, embroidery, some sculptures, 2 | THREE VOLUMES THAT COMPRISE THE CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ, IN BILINGUAL EDITION.
installations and set design. THE PUBLICATION COLLECTS AROUND 3,400 RECORDS FROM THE VISUAL ARTIST
In 1991, when he found out he had HIV, the artist was not intimidated
and, inside the tragic scene of a time, goes on producing and insists BOOKS PHOTOGRAPHY | PAGES 86 TO 89
in the problem of man in the world. There is an infinite variety of
and the apparent formal simplicity hides a world of sophisticated VERBOVISUALITY
themes and styles in Leonilson’s work, from many different sources,
connotations that emerge with the catalogue raisonné, which
demanded over twenty years of research. ORIGINAL ESSAY BY THE POET, CRITIC AND CURATOR FROM
The survey and record of the works was carried out by Projeto MADRID ADOLFO MONTEJO NAVAS BLURS THE BORDERS BETWEEN
Leonilson, led by his sister, Ana Lenice Dias, founder of the project,
and sponsored by Fundação Edson Queiroz.. In the first volume PHOTOGRAPHY AND POETRY
(1971-1980), Leonilson appears as a premature artist, an adolescent,
with delicate paintings and drawings, appreciating things as they BY DANIEL DE MESQUITA BENEVIDES
naturally are. Then, everything explodes.
In the following decade, about to enter the art scene, he goes WE CAN STILL HEAR THE ECHOES of the discussion around
against the grain of the big exhibitions that typify oversized pieces the Nobel prize of literature granted to Bob Dylan, as if poetry
as an agent of form. He keeps himself intimist, and the expressive was not, lato sensu, the most free among the artistic expressions.
fury seems to connect drawing and painting to body and soul, In a way, this is where Montejo Navas departs from in his book
in a correspondence between man and the world, to what art is Fotografia & Poesia (Afinidades Eletivas) [Photography & Poetry
one of the keys. (Elective Affinities)]. It is an inspired and inspiring essay, in which
Leonilson accomplishes his work without concessions, under he places both languages in the scope of “enlarged aesthetic,
his view of the world, experiments and sees that the doors of which lives off metamorphoses, appropriations, unsuspected
perception may open to infinity. Love and alienation, agitation modulations between the ‘archeology of detail’ and the ‘micrologies
and peace, hope and frustration are a perpetual orgy connecting of existence’.” Among these affinities, the author differentiates

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