AUTODIDACT
Almine Rech London is pleased to present 'Autodidact', a group show with works by Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, Heitor dos Prazeres, Chico da Silva and Rubem Valentim.
January 16 - February 22, 2025
Trained outside of conventional artistic structures, the self-taught artist exercises a unique freedom. These artists challenge accepted ideas and traditions regarding the role of the creator and the contexts in which talent can flourish. The result is art with a distinct point of view and a singular aesthetic. Each of the four artists presented at Almine Rech London followed a different path that led them to create. Their work is a testament to the idiosyncratic power and cultural influence of the autodidact.
Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato was a master of texture and color. He grew up in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, the son of Italian immigrants. His family moved to Italy in 1920, where Lorenzato worked as a wall painter, helping to reconstruct post-war Europe. In 1948 he returned to Brazil. It wasn’t until 1956 that Lorenzato fully dedicated himself to painting. Heitor dos Prazeres was a multidisciplinary artist who personified early 20th century Rio de Janeiro. Dos Prazeres grew up in a creative home, his mother was a seamstress; his father was a woodworker and clarinetist in the National Guard band. His first artistic projects were musical, creating the Grupo Carioca in the 1930s and playing percussion with the Rádio Nacional and Cassino da Urca.
Chico da Silva’s work brought to life colorful, otherworldly animals. Da Silva was born in Alto Tejo, Brazil, to a Brazilian mother and an Indigenous Peruvian father. He later lived in Pirambu, a neighborhood in Fortaleza, Brazil. In the 1940s, this was where his artistic practice began, drawing murals on local fishermen’s cottages. Soon after, he met the Swiss artist and writer Jean-Pierre Chabloz. Captivated by his murals, Chabloz provided da Silva with materials and introduced him to the Brazilian artistic scene. Rubem Valentim used geometry and a variety of religious and cultural references to create representations of freedom and strength. Born in Bahia, Brazil, he worked as a dentist and trained as a journalist for before becoming an artist full-time. Valentim was a key figure in the1940s cultural revival of Bahia. He moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1957, where he taught art history at Instituto de Belas Artes.
His paintings draw from symbols associated with Brazil’s African heritage, the Candomblé religion, as well other Afro-diasporic cultures. In 1976 the artist declared: “The Afro-Amerindian-Northeastern-Brazilian iconology is alive. It is an immense source—as big as Brazil—and we must drink in it with lucidity and great love.”