Page 120 - ARTE!Brasileiros #57

ENGLISH VERSION EVERYTHING IN CHECK

In the first two decades of cinema, as a How did you meet Arthur Piza? but also a means of “making known the
percentage, there were more women working Betina Zalcberg – I’m going to start this work of young French and Europeans in
in the industry than there are now - reports story by pulling a string far away - both for Latin America”. [L’Espace latino-américain
critic and historian Pamela Hutchinson. the pleasure of evoking a loved one and for operated in Paris from 1980 to 1993].
Will we be able to reverse these numbers the domino effect of friendships it represents. How did the Arthur Piza Fund was born?
in this decade and end the idea that certain I am referring to Vera Pedrosa, who met When Piza died in 2017, the endowment fund
functions in film production are “reserved Arthur Luiz and Clelia Piza in 1953, when she took shape, according to the guidelines drawn
for men”? accompanied her father – Mário Pedrosa, up by the couple. Installed in the artist’s
It depends on the profession, specifically, then a member of the Art Commission of the studio, it aims to preserve and disseminate
because film editors are mostly women. In the 2nd Bienal de São Paulo together with Flávio his work – including the preparation of his
beginning, though, until the 1970s, there were de Carvalho and Tarsila do Amaral – on his raisonné catalogue, to which the six members
hardly any female directors of photography preparatory trip of what would be known as of the Council (three for Brazil and three for
and they said it wasn’t possible because the the “Biennale de Guernica”. Almost 30 years France: Marcelo Araújo, Maria Antonieta
camera was too heavy and women couldn’t later, it was she, who was pursuing a career Dente, Catherine de Leobardy, Virginie
take it - nonsense like that, but today it’s at Itamaraty, who introduced the artist Julio Duval, Henri Helman and myself) are actively
changing, a qualitative change, no only Villani to the couple. I entered the affection involved. We are also continuing the Piza
quantitative. link then through him. [Julio and Betina live Award, created by the couple in 2014.
between Paris and Brazil and have been
How did your friendship with Brazilian artist partners ever since] What specifically does the award consist of?
Ione Saldanha begin? She will be honored Having just arrived in Paris, Julio had It is intended to perpetuate and expand the
with a retrospective exhibition at Masp from received from Piza and Clelia the same warm exchange between the French and Brazilian
December 2021. welcome that they reserved for so many art scenes, in which they both believed so much.
Ione was a great friend. I was introduced to Brazilian artists in the 1980s. In addition The laureates - one a year, alternately French
Ione by a friend of my parents. She wasn’t to their generosity, this tradition was the and Brazilian - are invited to spend a month
from my generation, she was from an older extension of an engagement that began in in the “other” country. There is no production
generation. We got along really well, I loved the 1960s: the couple was one of the anchors obligation, nor is there any privileged plastic
her work. They told me how she worked with of a network of solidarity with Brazilian exiles, language. The idea is to offer a moment of
bamboo and, being as curious as I am, I went living in France after the 1964 coup. contact, of beneficial curiosity, of discovery.
to see the works at her studio in Rio. That When the political situation began to The bridges are built, almost naturally. On his visit
was in the early 1980s and until her death we unwind on the other side of the Atlantic, they to Brazil, the first laureate, the Parisian Jérôme
were great friends… As it was a pre-internet focused more specifically on the art world. Benitta, who practices super material painting,
time I had a great correspondence with Ione. Many are the young artists who traveled to met the second, the excellent engraver Fabricio
Aware of this, Adriano Pedrosa, curator of Paris – to study at the School of Fine Arts Lopez. When he went to Paris, things started to
this exhibition, asked me if I wanted to write or simply for a walk – who can testify to the happen: they made a series of works with four
a letter, another letter to her. I decided it attention received by the couple. It was hands, and an exhibition that the Pizas had the
was a good idea and wrote to Ione trying to actually on one of these visits - as Zerbini pleasure of witnessing. The bridge sometimes
include things that were very typical of her recounts in the catalog of the Leonilson takes them further than the award artists:
and that gave an idea of who she was as exhibition by Antonio Dias, Profile of a Jérôme has already returned to São Paulo for
a person. She liked my films, I remember collection, held at Pinakotheke Cultural in 2019 two residencies at Ateliê Fidalga, and has an
that when mam Rio did a retrospective with - that Piza suggested to Leonilson, then 24, exhibition planned at CasaGaleria in August 2022.
them, she carried along an audience that that he go meet Antonio in Rome. He sensed Because of the pandemic, the 2020 and
was composed of Lucio Costa, Lygia Pape. it would turn on. We know today that it was a 2021 awards will happen in 2022. This is Jeremy
It was fantastic. date tacked on the stars! Chabaud, whose artistic practice including
While Piza received the plastic artists, painting and sculpture has already earned him
international institution [paGEs 80 to 85] Clelia Pisa (thus, with an all-feminist S, residency award from the Albers Foundation
to trace her path independently from her in New York, but who also uses a huge dose
ARTHUR PIZA AND HIS husband) was dedicated to the dissemination of “do-together”, developing collaborative
LEGACY FOR AN ETERNAL of Brazilian literature. She is responsible projects (no wonder, he is the current director
for the first edition of Maria Carolina de
of the Jeune Création association in Paris); and
BRIDGE WITH ART Jesus outside Brazil: Journal de Bitita (Ed. Santídio Pereira, born in Piauí in 1991, who has
A.M. Métailié), whose preface he signs, and been developing his own way of making prints,
In Paris, arte!brasileiros interviewed art which is on display in the exhibition about with an increasing mastery of the technique
historian Betina Zalcberg, member of the the author on display at ims Paulista. By at the service of those wonderful images that
Arthur Luiz Piza Fund board and friend of the chance, the other current exhibition at ims he carries within him.
artist who died in 2017 also indirectly refers to Clelia’s action in Opportunities will not be lacking for them,
literary circles: legend has it that it was she Sophie Lambert (refined figuration artist, Piza
By patricia roussEaux who introduced Clarice Lispector to the Award 2016), Estela Sokol (who uses light and
Editions des Femmes in Paris. In any case, color as sculptural material, 2017 laureate) and
in Conversation with betina ZalCberg, art the preface to the first French edition of La the next laureates, to continue forging links
historian and one of six board members of the Passion Selon G.H is hers, today one of the between the two countries. It is the domino
Arthur Luiz Piza Endowment Fund (Fonds Arthur author’s best-known novels. of friendships and affinities around the Piza(s)
Luiz Piza, based in Paris), arte!brasileiros had Piza was particularly close to Sérgio that continues to advance.
the opportunity to delve into the history of Piza Camargo, Sérvulo Esmeraldo, Samson
and some other artists who settled between the Flexor, Lygia Clark, Rossini Perez, Flávio international artHur luiz piza aWard [paGEs 86 to 89]
1960s and 1980s in the French capital, at a rich Shiró, from Argentina’s Julio Le Parc and
and conflicting time in the history of Brazil. Antonio Seguí, from Chile’s Roberto Matta ARTISTS, YOUNG AND
Arthur Piza was born in São Paulo in 1928 (I’m certainly forgetting more people…).
and began his artistic training in 1943, studying Amidst this intellectual effervescence and COLLABORATIVE
painting and fresco with Antonio Gomide (1895- a certain political euphoria (Mitterrand’s
1967). After participating in the 1st São Paulo election in France, gradual opening of Established by Clélia and Arthur Piza,
International Biennial, in 1951, he traveled to Europe regimes in South America), Piza founds award is stimulus for Brazilians and
and took up residence in Paris. He died in that and animates - with Le Parc, Matta, Luis French since 2014
city in 2017, aged 89. Tomasello, Garcia-Rossi, Rodolfo Krasno,
Betina Zalcberg has worked at Sotheby ’s, mam- Jack Vanarsky, followed by many others - the By patricia roussEaux
Ville de Paris and Center National des monuments Latin American Space[2], defined as “a place
historiques. Today, she sails between São Paulo of confrontation and dissemination of various the frenCh artist JérémY ChabauD is one of the
and Paris. Read the interview below. aspects of current Latin American creativity”, two winners of this year’s Arthur Luiz Piza Prize,
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