WILMA MARTINS

Inner Territories Galatea 23 August–8 November 2025 Padre João Manuel, São Paulo

Press Release

Galatea presents Wilma Martins: territórios interiores [Inner Territories], a solo exhibition of artist Wilma Martins, featuring works from her emblematic Cotidiano [Everyday Life] series, opening on August 23 at its Padre João Manuel Street location in São Paulo.

Developed between 1974 and 1984, Cotidiano [Everyday Life] is considered the artist’s most renowned series. In it, scenes of domestic interiors—such as living rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms—intertwine with rivers, plants, and animals, creating compositions where the real and the imaginary meet in harmony. The intimate whiteness of private spaces contrasts with the organic vitality of nature, revealing a poetic and quietly subversive gaze upon the small gestures of everyday life.

The series was rediscovered in the exhibition Cotidiano e Sonho [Everyday Life and Dream], a retrospective held in 2013 and curated by her husband, Frederico Morais, an important Brazilian art critic and historian.

This will be the first exhibition dedicated to the artist since the posthumous retrospective Wilma Martins: território da memória [Territory of Memory], held in 2023. It is also the first time in decades that the Cotidiano [Everyday Life] series will be presented on such an extensive scale. The show represents a unique opportunity to revisit one of the most significant bodies of work in Wilma’s production, reaffirming her importance in the panorama of contemporary Brazilian art.

’Cotidiano [Everyday Life] stands out for its firm, precise lines and the way it articulates silence and intensity. It is a deeply intimate yet universal work’, says Fernanda Morse, who authored the critical text. ‘It is a body of work that still speaks strongly to the present’.

The exhibition reiterates Galatea’s commitment to preserving and valuing fundamental artistic legacies, while inviting the public to rediscover an artist whose production remains relevant and current.

About the artist

Wilma Martins Morais (Belo Horizonte, 1934 – Rio de Janeiro, 2022) began her artistic training between 1953 and 1956 at Escola Guignard, in Belo Horizonte, a key hub in the renewal of modern art in the state of Minas Gerais. There she studied with characters such as painter Alberto da Veiga Guignard, sculptor Franz Weissmann, printmaker Misabel Pedrosa and art critic Frederico Morais. Alongside her studies, she worked as an illustrator and layout designer for magazines and newspapers in her hometown, and in 1966 she moved to Rio de Janeiro, where she lived and worked until her passing in 2022.

Throughout her career, the artist worked as a painter, printmaker, illustrator, and costume designer. Her production is marked by the poetic exploration of graphic languages, especially woodcut engraving, as well as techniques such as ink and acrylic painting. Her creative process involved constant circulation between mediums, using drawing both as a study and as a direct record of compositions.