Combining elements of representation and abstraction, Brazilian artist Marina Perez Simão is known for her dreamlike, colourful paintings of imagined landscapes.
Read MoreBornin Vitória, Brazil, Simão grew up in Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, where she developed a deep appreciation for nature. In the early aughts, Simão moved to Paris, where she earned a BFA from the École Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and an MFA from École Nationale Superieure de Creation Industrielle.
Marina Perez Simão's mostly untitled oil paintings are distinct for their rich hues, organic shapes, and fluid brushstrokes. With suggestions of suns, moons, horizons, and mountains in bold, saturated colours, many of her works can be read as landscapes. However, while Simão is inspired by the power and beauty of the Brazilian terrain, her paintings often resemble vistas only possible in dreams. One untitled oil painting from 2020, for example, is divided into several irregular shapes, which at once evoke warm umber sand, a golden setting sun, blue sky, and an ominous storm.
Simão's paintings are often discussed with the language of music, as the gestural nature of brushstrokes seem to create rhythms, making shapes vibrate against one another.
Simão works on several canvases at once in her São Paulo studio. In the spring of 2021, Simão held her first solo exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York. Titled Tudo é e não é (Everything Is and Is Not), the show comprised 22 paintings and ten watercolours made while alone in her studio during the pandemic lockdown.
In 2009, Simão was awarded the first Prix des Partenaires du Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint-Étienne, France.
Select solo and group exhibitions include Sonia Gomes & Marina Perez Simão, Pace, East Hampton (2020); Éveils Maritimes, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2020); and Landscapes of the South, Mendes Wood DM, New York (2020), __ and Miniature, Embassy of Brazil, Rome (2016).
Simão's work is held in several public collections around the world including the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Étienne, France; The Ekard Collection, Netherlands; Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka; Speed Art Museum, Louisville; and The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago.
Elliat Albrecht | Ocula | 2021
