Adriano Pedrosa – författare

A colossal, panoramic, much-needed appraisal of the visual cultures of Afro-Atlantic territories across six centuriesPublished with Museu de Arte de São Paulo.Named one of the best books of 2021 by ArtforumAfro-Atlantic Histories brings together a selection of more than 400 works and documents by more than 200 artists from the 16th to the 21st centuries that express and analyze the ebbs and flows between Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe. The book is motivated by the desire and need to draw parallels, frictions and dialogues around the visual cultures of Afro-Atlantic territories—their experiences, creations, worshiping and philosophy. The so-called Black Atlantic, to use the term coined by Paul Gilroy, is geography lacking precise borders, a fluid field where African experiences invade and occupy other nations, territories and cultures.The plural and polyphonic quality of “histórias” is also of note; unlike the English “histories,” the word in Portuguese carries a double meaning that encompasses both fiction and nonfiction, personal, political, economic and cultural, as well as mythological narratives.The book features more than 400 works from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean, as well as Europe, from the 16th to the 21st century. These are organized in eight thematic groupings: Maps and Margins; Emancipations; Everyday Lives; Rites and Rhythms; Routes and Trances; Portraits; Afro Atlantic Modernisms; Resistances and Activism.Artists include: Nina Chanel Abney, Emma Amos, Benny Andrews, Emanoel Araujo, Maria Auxiliadora, Romare Bearden, John Biggers, Paul Cézanne, Victoria Santa Cruz, Beauford Delaney, Aaron Douglas, Melvin Edwards, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Ben Enwonwu, Ellen Gallagher, Theodore Géricault, Barkley Hendricks, William Henry Jones, Loïs Mailou Jones, Titus Kaphar, Wifredo Lam, Norman Lewis, Ibrahim Mahama, Edna Manley, Archibald Motley, Abdias Nascimento, Gilberto de la Nuez, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Dalton Paula, Rosana Paulino, Howardena Pindell, Heitor dos Prazeres, Joshua Reynolds, Faith Ringgold, Gerard Sekoto, Alma Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas, Rubem Valentim, Kara Walker and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

A compendious celebration of the exuberant, multilayered paintings and prints of Beatriz MilhazesPublished with Museu de Arte de São Paulo.This is the most comprehensive book to date on Beatriz Milhazes, featuring many previously unpublished paintings and prints. Milhazes, a pivotal figure in contemporary art and the history of abstraction, works with a complex repertoire of images associated with different motifs, origins and sources. She works mainly in painting, printmaking and collage, but also in drawing, sculpture, artist’s books and textiles, among other mediums. Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, geometry and free form, her compositions are intricate, dense, multicolored and literally full of layers—of colors, paints, papers and meanings. Milhazes’ sources are diverse and varied: from modernism to the Baroque, from folk art or "arte popular" to pop culture, from fashion to jewelry, from architecture to abstraction, from the history of art to nature. Her work encompasses multiple references, including the artists Hilma af Klint, Sonia Delaunay, Bridget Riley, Henri Matisse, Tarsila do Amaral and Piet Mondrian.Beatriz Milhazes: Avenida Paulista includes more than 170 works made since 1989, a turning point in Milhazes’ career. It was in that year that she developed the technique she calls “monotransfer,” in which she paints on a sheet of transparent plastic and then decals or transfers the painted and dry element to the canvas. The book provides a unique opportunity to discover her diverse, complex, multifaceted and singular work.Beatriz Milhazes was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1960. Her works can be found in the collections of the Guggenheim, MASP, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Tate and the Centre Pompidou, among others. Milhazes lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.

A radical reconception of Degas’ sculpture through the lens of gender, labor and more, with new photography of the worksPublished with Museu de Arte de São Paulo.This substantial new monograph on the work of Edgar Degas (1834–1917), one of the most significant artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, is a decisive contribution to the literature on the French Impressionist artist. An innovative and groundbreaking book, with underlying discussions related to “dance, politics and society,” it pays special attention to issues of gender, identity, labor, race and the representation of women. Degas worked in various mediums, and, at the end of his life, left around 6,000 works, including 2,000 related to the world of dance and ballet. The contradictions and ambiguities of his art, especially the way he straddles both tradition and modernity, reaffirm both his uniqueness and significance in the history of Western art.Degas: Dance, Politics and Society includes ten essays, never before published, by experts around the world, and also features a visual essay of black-and-white photographs of the bronze sculptures, including Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, by the Brazilian artist Sofia Borges. Through her camera, Borges reinterprets and conceives new images of Degas' most cherished and classic sculptures. Borges’ extraordinary photographs reveal, transform and revisit Degas’ works in an innovative and radical manner.

A legendary personality

Lina Bo Bardi is regarded as one of the most important architects in Brazil’s history. Beginning her career as a Modernist architect in Rome, Bo Bardi and her husband emigrated to Brazil following the end of WWII. Bo Bardi quickly resumed her practice in her adopted homeland with architecture that was both modern and firmly rooted in the culture of Brazil. In 1951 she designed “Casa de Vidro” (“Glass House”), her first built work, where she and her husband would live for the rest of their lives. She also designed the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (São Paulo Art Museum), a landmark of Latin American modernist architecture which opened in 1968. It was for this museum she created the iconic glass easel display system, which remains radical to date. This book presents a comprehensive record of Bo Bardi’s overarching approach to art and architecture and shows how her exhibition designs, curatorial projects, and writing informed her spatial designs. Essays on Bo Bardi’s life and work accompany archival material such as design sketches and writings by the artist, giving new insight into the conceptual and material processes behind this radical thinker and creator’s projects.

The debut monograph on the Brazilian fotoclubismo photographerThis is the first monograph dedicated to the work of the trailblazing German Brazilian photographer Gertrudes Altschul (1904–62). Featuring an elegant uncoated paper cover with stamped lettering, it reproduces all 70 of the artist’s known vintage prints, exploring her main themes: modern Brazilian architecture, botanical motifs and still lifes. The volume includes a selection of the artist’s archival material, such as contact sheets.Of Jewish origin, Altschul migrated in 1939 from her hometown, Berlin, to Brazil with her husband, fleeing the Nazi regime. She settled in São Paulo, where she divided her time between photography and the production of flowers for hats in a factory run by the couple. Altschul was one of the few women to be part of the well-known Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB) in São Paulo, an important group that brought together photographers aligned with modernist photography in Brazil.

The largest publication to date on the work of a pioneering Brazilian painterIone Saldanha (1919–2001) was a highly influential though underappreciated figure in the history of 20th-century Brazilian art. Her paintings on canvas and paper, as well as more unconventional surfaces such as wooden slats, spools and planks, depict the perpetual invention and reinvention of the city.

Articulating the ideas, colors and forms of the Pan-Africanist movement within a “Latin-Amefrican” imaginaryThis catalog documents the paintings of African-Brazilian scholar, artist, poet, dramatist and activist Abdias Nascimento (1914–2011), compiling around 70 works from his wide-ranging career.

“Paula’s beautiful, ambitious project illuminates forgotten histories, honoring the overlooked.” –Andrea K. Scott, The New YorkerThe Brazilian artist Dalton Paula (born 1982) works across painting, installation, photography and sculpture. Drawing on rigorous visual research, he seeks to critically interpret historical events, particularly as they have affected Black people in Brazil—a country that, after Nigeria, contains the second-largest population of African descent.Dalton Paula: Brazilian Portraits showcases a sampling from the portrait series Paula embarked on in 2018, a tribute to the Black Brazilian men and women who fought for freedom and justice over the course of several centuries but have been systematically erased from the country’s dominant historical narrative. Through his portraits (one of which—a gripping rendering of the Brazilian slave rebellion leader Zeferina—appears on the cover of the much-acclaimed 2021 volume Afro-Atlantic Histories), Paula provides much-needed dignity, visibility and recognition to these valorous figures.

A colossal panorama of Brazilian visual culture across five centuriesPublished for the bicentennial of Brazil’s independence, Brazilian Histories brings together a selection of more than 300 works and documents from different mediums, typologies and regions of the country, spanning the 16th to 21st centuries.

Otherness and exploitation in the fraught oeuvre of Post-Impressionism's canonical painterThis book accompanies the first exhibition to investigate Paul Gauguin’s (1848–1903) relationship with the question of alterity and the exoticizing of otherness in his paintings. Adopting an engagingly critical tone, Paul Gauguin: The Other and I deals with central questions within the celebrated Post-Impressionist’s oeuvre, focusing on both his self-portraits and his works produced in Tahiti.Alongside reproductions of relevant works, the book also features essays that examine the tensions between Gauguin’s biography and the image that the artist assiduously created of himself, as well as the way in which his oeuvre reinforced an imaginary about otherness, addressing crucial and current issues such as the notion of primitivism, the "exotic" and the "tropics," and cultural appropriation, as well as matters related to the erotization of the female body, sexuality and androgyny.

An indigenous Yanomami artist translates the body art of his community into paper-based worksSheroanawe Hakihiiwe (born 1971) is an Indigenous Yanomami artist from the Venezuelan Amazon. His practice consists of minimal and abstract drawings inspired by the body paintings of his community, which he began producing in the 1990s after learning to make paper using native fibers.

A sweeping look at the history of the artist collective whose graphic poster designs helped define the visual culture of AIDS activismGran Fury (1988–95) was a New York–based activist artist collective that emerged from ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), an organization founded in 1987 to raise awareness about the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States through political activism. Named for the vehicle favored by the New York City police, Gran Fury formed to summon a sense of collective indignation. The collective’s innovative graphic design campaigns were mobilized in ACT UP demonstrations to awaken the public to the disdain, neglect and silence of Ronald Reagan’s administration during the epidemic. The group produced posters, newspapers, stickers, photographs, videos and billboards that were circulated to transform perceptions about HIV/AIDS, interrogate ineffective public policies and underreported government data, interrupt misconceptions disseminated by the media, confront the morality of religious institutions, and alleviate the stigma and discrimination faced by people living with HIV/AIDS. They worked closely with other activist groups, including the Silence=Death Project, whose posters featuring a pink triangle came to be a defining visual of the AIDS crisis.This richly illustrated catalog is a comprehensive survey of the collective’s body of work. It includes unpublished essays, historical interviews, rare pamphlets, photographs and ephemera that altogether chart the development of a new visual language for effecting social change. Gran Fury: Art Is Not Enough is an indispensable reference for the study of the intersection of activism and the arts in the late 20th century.

Using the painter’s queer identity as a framework to understand his visceral approach to figurationFrancis Bacon is considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century, best known for his distinctive way of portraying human figures. Especially in his male portraits and nudes, the physicality of the body—skin, flesh, muscles—is translated by the artist into thick, oily textures, giving the figures almost abstract shapes. Flashes of teeth, torsos and rib cages underscore Bacon’s visceral philosophy regarding the human form. As the artist famously said: “We are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go into a butcher’s shop I always think it is surprising that I wasn’t there instead of the animal.”Beyond their carnal overtones, these paintings unite a wide variety of influences, revisiting canonical themes and combining references to the great masters of painting with Bacon’s own perceptions of the male body. Both his biography and oeuvre were permeated by the presence of his lovers, with whom he established intense and turbulent relationships. Francis Bacon: The Beauty of Meat accompanies the 2024 exhibition at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, exploring the queer aspects of the artist's work and highlighting how Bacon, with his innovative and impactful painting, paved the way for queer presence in visual culture.Born in Ireland, British painter Francis Bacon (1909–92) worked in furniture design and interior decoration until 1945, when his career as a painter took off. He enjoyed colossal success in his lifetime, especially as part of a London cohort that included such contemporaries as Lucian Freud and John Deakin.

Nearly four decades of work from the photographer who redefined the expression of gender in contemporary queer portraitureA leading voice in contemporary photography, Catherine Opie has been known for her portraits of the queer scene in California since the late 1980s. A fundamental element of Opie’s work is the observation of different gender performances through a critical revision of the genre of portraiture. Her photography emphasizes how portraiture has the power to both reinforce and deconstruct conventional and binary expressions of gender. The title of this publication and the MASP exhibition it accompanies is based on the double meaning of the word gênero in Portuguese, meaning both “gender” and “genre.”For her first solo show in Brazil, Opie enters into dialogue with the tradition of the portrait—a way of representing the human figure that dates to the 15th century in the West—producing an archive of diverse presentations of gender and sexuality. Around 60 photographs from her most iconic series are displayed alongside a selection of around 15 emblematic portraits from MASP’s collection. Strongly marked by figuration and the formal constraint of portraiture, the juxtaposition of these works accentuates the dialogues, tensions and reformulations that Opie’s photographic oeuvre proposes.Catherine Opie was born in Ohio in 1961 and is currently a professor of photography and the chair of the art department at UCLA. Opie’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. She has had solo exhibitions of her work at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; St. Louis Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among many others.

The first book to examine Monet's landscapes as ecological systems and intricate microcosms of nature and societyKnown almost as much for his gardens as for his paintings, the Impressionist Claude Monet (1840–1926) held a fascination with nature that only deepened as his career progressed. Monet's Ecology is the first exhibition to investigate the artist's relationship to ecology and the environment. Illustrated with a dazzling array of landscapes, from his early coastal views of Le Havre to his "impressions" of Westminster Bridge and Gare Saint-Lazare, his Rouen Cathedral series and finally Water Lilies, each curatorial essay in the catalog examines a different aspect of Monet's "ecologies"—from the industrial biomes of London and Paris to the pastoralism of middle-class leisure and contemporary protests against climate change that directly invoke Monet's Giverny scenes—arguing that Monet's radical engagement with the natural world positioned him at the forefront of ecological awareness.

A chromatic celebration of LGBTQIA+ artists, queer and trans activisms and the "queering" of history, with works by Andrea Geyer, Claude Cahun, Félix González-Torres, Martin Wong, Peter Hujar, Roberto Burle Marx and many moreSince 2016, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) has centered its exhibition program on exploring different histories, with each year featuring a large-scale, international and transhistorical group exhibition, paired with an exquisitely produced catalog. Following the bestselling titles Afro-Atlantic Histories and Indigenous Histories, Queer Histories is the next chapter in this cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary survey series exploring underrepresented or marginalized narratives.Gathering more than 200 artworks from public and private collections in Brazil and abroad, Queer Histories is organized into seven sections: "Love, family and communities," "The sacred and the profane," "Signs and spaces," "Activism and archives," "Survival," "Queer Abstraction" and "Visibility." While many of the artists featured in Queer Histories are working in the wake of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its profound impact on queer and trans communities, the exhibition goes beyond artists who identify as LGBTQIA+, approaching queerness as a lens through which to reinterpret the world, to queer history and to reclaim erased narratives. This compendium is a critical resource for understanding how art and history continue to function as sites of resistance and transformation in LGBTQIA+ lives.Artists include: Andrea Geyer, Andy Warhol, Beverly Buchanan, Catherine Opie, Claude Cahun, David Wojnarowicz, Etel Adnan, Félix González-Torres, Glenn Ligon, Kia LaBeija, Leonilson, Martin Wong, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Peter Hujar, Roberto Burle Marx, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Salman Toor, Tseng Kwong Chi, Tuesday Smillie, Yuki Kihara, Zanele Muholi.

Blending formal rigor with stringent activism, Krajcberg's six-decade-long oeuvre centers his deep connection to nature and his advocacy for the Amazon rainforestsA pioneer in the integration of art and ecology, Polish Brazilian artist Frans Krajcberg (1921–2017) was a trailblazer in raising visibility around environmental issues, working with remnants of tree trunks, vines and charred wood, denouncing forest fires and the violence of extractivism.

In contrast to empirical Western botanical illustration, Rodríguez’s drawings show the interaction between species and the cycles of the Amazon forestsAbel Rodríguez (1941–2025), a member of the Nonuya and Muinane communities, was born in the Colombian Amazon. Entrusted as a sabedor, a keeper of botanical knowledge, Rodríguez maintained a drawing practice around native plants beginning in the 1990s.

Building objects with discarded items, plant parts and even her own body, Tossin’s mixed-media works make the disasters of climate change a realityInstead of portraying environmental catastrophe, Brazilian artist Clarissa Tossin (born 1973) seeks to incorporate its materiality, making artistic production from the residues of a collapsed world. The titular expression in this case refers to the moment in history when the effects of climate change will no longer be reversible.

Over 200 works across painting, sculpture, weaving, maps and video attest to ecological harm and suggest reparative, non-anthropocentric modes of global cohabitationThis book brings together more than 200 works by artists, activists and social movements that examine, from different perspectives, the concept of “ecology” as a system of interrelationships among human and more-than-human beings—including animals, plants, rivers, forests, mountains, fungi and minerals.Lushly illustrated, this catalog includes reproductions of works and curatorial essays divided into thematic sections—“Web of Life,” “Geographies of Time,” “On Becoming,” “Territories, Migrations, and Borders” and “Inhabiting the Climate.” The paintings, sculptures, weavings, maps and videos of the 117 artists presented, nearly all of whom come from the so-called Global South, not only shed light on the effects of colonialism, environmental racism and global capitalism on bodies, territories and ecosystems, but also the historical and structural roots of this mode of living, as well as different ways of seeing, inhabiting and transforming the planet.

Art and ritual intertwine in Taniki’s cosmological visions of Yanomami spiritsBorn around 1945 in the Yanomami Indigenous Lands of the Brazilian Amazon, artist and shaman André Taniki Yanomami has illustrated both the habits and rituals of his people and his own cosmological visions through vibrant, patterned drawings.

A long-needed appraisal of the abstractions, mail art and conceptual work of Anna Bella Geiger, one of postwar Brazil’s unsung pioneersBrazilian artist Anna Bella Geiger (born 1933) was one of the first artists to engage in abstract art in Brazil, participating in the historic exhibition of Brazilian abstract art held in Rio de Janeiro in 1953. Since the 1970s she has also worked with video, conceptual art and mail art.Native Brazil/Alien Brazil, named after her provocative political postcard series from 1976, covers the artist’s entire seven-decade career from the 1950s to the present, providing an overview of the extraordinary scope and diversity of Geiger’s work and themes, including informal abstraction, self-portraits, maps, landscapes and equations, as well as the artist’s interest in the interior of the human body, and her critiques of art systems and analyses of political and historical issues of Brazil.

The 60th International Art Exhibition, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, which will be held from April 20th to November 24th 2024 in Venice, is titled Foreigners Everywhere. The exhibition takes its name from a series of artworks made in 2004 by the Claire Fontaine collective, and will be, as the Curator himself explained, "a celebration of the foreign, the distant, the outsider, the queer, as well as the indigenous". It "will focus on artists who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, émigrés, exiled, and refugees — especially those who have moved between the Global South and the Global North" (Adriano Pedrosa). The catalogue, published by Edizioni La Biennale di Venezia, is as always printed in two volumes, and follows the exhibition route to accompany visitors and art lovers through the exhibition spaces of the Giardini and the Arsenale. It also presents the other projects on display in various locations around the city of Venice and at Forte Marghera, in Mestre. Volume I of the catalogue is dedicated to the International Exhibition, curated by Adriano Pedrosa. The first pages of the book open with two short introductions by President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco and President Roberto Cicutto, followed by an interview with Adriano Pedrosa by Julieta Gonzàlez.Part one of the book is dedicated to the critical essays and a number of “Conversations”, including interviews with Anna Maria Maiolino and Nil Yalter, Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement of the Biennale Arte 2024, and one with the Claire Fontaine collective. Part two is dedicated to the presentation of the artists on exhibit and is divided into two main sections: Nucleo Storico and Nucleo Contemporaneo. The catalogue includes essays by Jaider Esbell, Kobena Mercer, Luce Delire, Naine Terena, Ranajit Guha, Ticio Escobar and Walter Mignolo. Each artist is introduced by a critical essay that explores their work and is illustrated with a rich iconographic apparatus. The book ends with a detailed listing of the artworks on display.The National Participations and the Collateral Events participating in the 60th International Art Exhibition are gathered in Volume II, and are presented by texts illustrated with images that explore the works on exhibit in the Pavilions, the Giardini and the Arsenale, and the collateral events located in various venues throughout Venice.The graphic identity and design of the Biennale Arte 2024 publications is by: Estudio Campo (Paula Tinoco, Roderico Souza, Carolina Aboarrage), San Paolo.

Images of dance in art, from Hieronymus Bosch to Keith HaringThis volume gathers 250 works of art that depict dancing and its attendant cultures. Artists include Adrian Piper, Alexander Calder, Ana Mendieta, Edgar Degas, Faith Ringgold, Hélio Oiticica, Toulouse-Lautrec, Hieronymus Bosch, Keith Haring, Leonardo da Vinci, Luchita Hurtado, Lygia Pape, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Poussin, Kandinsky and more.

Sensuous biomorphic forms steeped in Brazilian history and culture Using materials such as bronze, concrete, stone and papier-mâché, Brazilian artist Erika Verzutti (born 1971) creates works that evoke animals and plants, landscapes and minerals, everyday items and objects from art history. This monograph spans her entire career since 2003.

A fresh view of the acclaimed Brazilian modernist painter through the lens of arte popularItalian-Brazilian artist Alfredo Volpi (1896–1988) was a central figure of Brazilian art in the 20th century. His painting is influenced by both modern and customary traditions, including handcraft, popular parties, religious themes and the facades of Brazilian colonial and vernacular architecture.

Colorful depictions of daily life in Brazil's Indigenous Yanomami cultureJoseca Yanomami (born 1971) is a member of the Indigenous Yanomami people in the Brazilian Amazon. His drawings depict Yanomami culture and history and address the conflict between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. This book reproduces 93 drawings held by MASP, the most substantial existing collection of his work.