Art critic Guy Brett honored in exhibition featuring great artists

On the 21st, the Pinakotheke gallery in São Paulo will open the exhibition “ Angels with Weapons ”. The show is inspired by the essay published by the critic, historian and philosopher of art Yve-Alain Bois . The exhibition features more than 42 works by these four artists, from private collections, which were exhibited at the Signals Gallery . In this essay, Yve-Alain Bois pays tribute to Guy Brett and David Medalla , one of the founders of the historic Signals Gallery and its importance in the dissemination of Brazilian art in England from the 1960s onwards. It was under the guidance of Guy Brett that at the time they exhibited: Sergio Camargo, Lygia Clark, Mira Schendel and, later with the closure of Signals, at the Whitechapel gallery, Hélio Oiticica. The exhibition “Angels with Weapons” features more than 42 works by these four artists, from private collections. The highlights of the event are: the set of Animals, by Lygia Clark , in aluminum, the Spatial Relief (c. 1959), in acrylic on wood, by Hélio Oiticica; and the Relief No. 172, from 1967, in painted wood, by Sergio Camargo . Another highlight is the London Diary (1966), by Mira Schendel. In this work, "it seems that for the first time, the tracing letters (letraset) witness the witty side of the artist that, later, would reappear with force in the rare spray paint drawings of the 1970s, in bright and vivid tones, and in the colorful series of 'Toquinhos', in which she plays with the creation of a particular language in which letters are associated with colors", wrote Taisa Palhares, in the catalog of the exhibition "The endless space of Mira Schendel" (2015), at Galeria Frente. Curated by Max Perlingeiro, the current exhibition is seen as an offshoot of " Lygia Clark–100 years ", an exhibition held in 2021-2022 by Pinakotheke Cultural with the precious collaboration of Yve-Alain Bois, critic, historian and philosopher of art, close friend of Lygia Clark, and researcher at the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, USA. "Guy Brett has always been a great reference for a better understanding of artistic production in Brazil since the 1960s. His friendship with artists such as Sergio Camargo, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark and Mira Schendel, in the 1960s, and, later, with Lygia Pape, Cildo Meireles, Antonio Manuel, Tunga, Waltercio Caldas, Regina Vater, Roberto Evangelista, Maria Thereza Alves, Jac Leirner, Ricardo Basbaum and Sonia Lins , facilitated the dissemination of Brazilian artistic production through several articles and books", writes Max Perlingeiro in the book "Brasil experimental-arte/vida: proposições e paradoxos" (Contracapa publisher, 2005), with texts by Guy Brett about these fifteen artists mentioned above, organized and prefaced by Katia Maciel, and translated by Renato Rezende, is "required reading". During the exhibition period, the book "Angels with Guns" will be released by Edições Pinakotheke, in two volumes: the first with the Portuguese translation of "Angels with Guns", by Yve-Alain Bois; and the second about the exhibition with images of the works of Sergio Camargo, Lygia Clark, Mira Schendel and Hélio Oiticica, texts about these artists written by Guy Brett, and a text by Luciano Figueiredo, who in 2017 organized, with Paulo Venâncio, at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, the exhibition "Guy Brett: a perto crítica". Sergio Camargo (1930-1990)

Mira Schendel (1919-1988) "When Mira Schendel's drawings were first exhibited in London in the mid-1960s at the Signals gallery (with the initial recommendation of Sergio Camargo), I found their economy astonishing. The radical emptiness of the sheet of paper was matched by the extreme delicacy of the records. As material objects, they had a unique quality that I had never seen in the graphic arts, a combination of format, quantity, size, paper used and inscription technique. At this time, Mira was in the midst of developing a form of production that would renew in a special way the capacity of art as a process of sensitization." Lygia Clark (1920-1988) "In a brief description, this may sound enigmatic and difficult. In practice, however, the development of Lygia Clark's work has had extraordinary clarity. Its coherence allows us to record a trajectory that begins with painting and ends with the practice of a kind of psychotherapy. For Lygia, this was not a change of profession, but rather a continuity in which the implications of her experiments changed our understanding of what the word 'artist' can mean. She went from a visual language in its purest sense to a 'language of the body', which is not performed or watched, but lived by the participant in such a way as to allow an effective and favorable relationship to 'healing' to occur in the face of life's crises." Helio Oiticica (1937-1980) "In order to support an exhibition planned by Signals, works by Hélio Oitcica had been sent to London through the Itamaraty. Rather than allow these works to return to Brazil unseen, I looked for a place to exhibit them in London during 1966. Meanwhile, Hélio was invited to participate in the Biennale des Juventud in Paris, where some of his Parangolés were exhibited. I wrote about the exhibition for 'The Times' and later that year I stated that the Parangolé was 'unlike anything I had seen before' and that Oiticica's sensibility 'could profoundly affect European and American art'. Finally, the Whitechapel gallery agreed to promote an exhibition by Hélio; after much back and forth, it opened in the spring of 1969. By 1965, Hélio's work had already appeared in the 'Signals Bulletin 4', and a show of his work had been scheduled for 1966. A first shipment of the work had already arrived from Brazil when the Signals enterprise sank financially and had to close its doors." The exhibition will be on display until December 16th and is planned to travel to the Pinakotheke Cultural, in Rio de Janeiro in the first half of 2024.