Ione Saldanha, Untitled, from the series Bambus [Bamboos], 1970s

Ione Saldanha Brazilian, 1919-2001

Untitled, from the series Bambus [Bamboos], 1970s

Tempera on bamboo

154 x 11.5 x 11.5 cm
60 5/8 x 4 1/2 x 4 1/2 in

Signed

Ione Saldanha was greatly influenced by the rapidly growing city and its architectural forms, whose intersecting planes can be read in the geometric arrangement of her tempera experiments. Embracing the translucency of the paint, she alternates between the full saturation of sunlight and washes of blues and purples that rest on the surface like shadows.

Her Bambus, celebrated in the 2024 Venice Biennale, play with the city on the vertical axis - stacks of buildings climbing up the hillsides of Rio de Janeiro - and on the horizontal axis - a continuous line of architecture experienced only as one encircles the painting and views it from all sides.

The Bambus are the result of a six-month process of drying, sanding and priming, and a single day of painting. Comparable to the efforts of so many minimalist painters exploring the ‘expanded field of painting' in the 20th century, Saldanha's work is unique, according to Adriano Pedrosa, in "the Brazilian’s painterly investment: the labor and care she devotes to the medium through her subtle and complex application of paint on the surface, her use of colors and her compositions."

"Due to their material roughness, the Bambus absorb the colour vibration, diminishing it and leaving visible small brushstrokes that slow the gaze … They are not on bamboo but are bamboo itself. The color accumulates on their surface without undoing the knots." - Luiz Camillo Osorio, in 'Ione Saldanha: The Invented City,' exhibition catalogue (São Paulo: MASP, 2021).

Provenance

Collection of the artist;
Private collection, Rio de Janeiro;
Private collection, São Paulo.

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Artworks

Ione Saldanha Brazilian, 1919-2001

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Provenance