EDIVAL RAMOSA

Resulting from a research project developed by André Pitol, who authors both the curatorship and the exhibition’s critical essay, Edival Ramosa: Alfabeto solare revisits works that remained for a long period in private collections in Brazil and abroad. Part of the group of works presented was recently featured in the 36th São Paulo Biennial, marking an important moment in the critical reassessment of the artist’s oeuvre.

Edival Ramosa’s work was deeply shaped by his experience in both the African and European continents during the 1960s and 1970s. The influence of postwar European and North American art movements can be seen in his investigations into a constructivist visual language, marked by optical games and references to urban visual culture through the use of materials such as enameled wood, stainless steel, and acrylic.

Elements such as spheres, cocoons, moons, comets, suns, and other “form-objects,” as the artist described many of his works, occupied a central place in his production, varying through chromatic gradations and geometric forms. Beginning in the 1970s, Ramosa also incorporated references from Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian aesthetics into his practice, employing materials such as straw, hides, feathers, beads, and bamboo.