ANÍSIO O. COUTO
b. 1960, BrazilA self-taught artist, Anísio O. Couto devotes himself to painting, with a body of work that stands out for its representation of everyday images drawn both from his imagination and from the environment in which he lives and moves. Born in Bahia, he developed most of his paintings after settling in Rio de Janeiro. The city, which usually occupies the place of a postcard image of the country, appears reinvented in his works, whether through fragments of the landscape or the deconstruction of visual clichés associated with its territory.
Although situated in the field of figuration, Couto’s images, scenes and characters take on fictional aspects. It is as if his canvases were passed through a kind of lens through which an entire familiar repertoire is subverted in favour of an imagined universe.
From the beginning, he has devoted himself to the representation of animals, such as butterflies, fish, cats and toucans, but also to everyday objects and situations, such as breakfast table utensils. In these works, although the dialogue with the still life genre is striking, the usual opaque and closed palettes of the genre give way to the vibration of solar colours, such as yellow, orange, red and pink, which highlight tropical fruits and objects.
Anísio O. Couto’s body of work thus reveals a certain desire to engage with a notion of Brazilianness that is increasingly revisited in the field of contemporary art, whose starting point lies in local modernism. In this sense, it presents a unique contemporaneity and a connection with the time and space in which it is produced. Situated between figuration and abstraction, Couto’s painting is the result of his ability to transform the pictorial act into a channel for translating his subjectivity and a powerful means of connecting with the world around him, which permeates and sensitises him.
Among the exhibitions in which he has participated are: Ensaio aberto (with Marcelo Conceição, curated by Victor Gorgulho), at TropiGalpão (Rio de Janeiro, 2025); Em busca do tempo roubado (curated by Luisa Duarte), at Flexa (Rio de Janeiro, 2024); O beijo no asfalto (curated by Ulisses Carrilho), at Flexa and TropiGalpão (Rio de Janeiro, 2024); Rio: a medida da terra, at Flexa (Rio de Janeiro, 2024); INCORPORAMA (curated by Pablo León de la Barra), at TropiGalpão (Rio de Janeiro, 2023). At the invitation of French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, she appears in the publication Pacto visual V (Rio de Janeiro: Estúdio Cru, 2024), which also features Carlos Garaicoa & Marcelo Cidade; Isaac Julien & Plataforma ÀRÀKÁ, Juan Araujo & Mauro Restiff.
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