Works produced by Rubem Valentim in the 1960s in Rome are exhibited at Biennale Arte 2024

Among the many artists taking part in the 60th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia: “Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere” is Rubem Valentim, whose centenary was celebrated with an exhibition at Almeida & Dale in 2022. His presence in the Central Pavilion of the Giardini in Venice is significant given Valentim's relationship with Italy. The works on display were produced between 1964 and 1966, during his stay in Rome, when the distance from Brazil led him to accentuate his cultural and spiritual heritage on his canvases.  

In 1965, Valentim held an exhibition at the Brazilian Embassy in Rome, at the Palazzo Doria Pamphili. The exhibition was visited by the Italian art critic and historian Giulio Carlo Argan, who began to follow the painter's career. The critic wrote about his work in the exhibition catalog “Rubem Valentim. 31 Objetos Emblemáticos e Relevos Emblemas” [31 Emblematic Objects and Emblematic Reliefs], in 1970:  

“The choice that is at the root of Rubem Valentim’s work results from his own statements: his signs are deduced from the magical symbology that is transmitted through the popular traditions of Black people in Brazil. The evocation of these symbolic-magical signs, however, has nothing to do with folklore, which can be seen from the successive states through which they pass before constituting themselves as pictorial images. It is necessary to show, rather, that they appear suddenly immunized, deprived of their own original, evocative or provocative virtues: the artist elaborates them until the threatening obscurity of the fetish is clarified in the limpid form of the Myth.” 

Other artists in the Biennale Arte 2024 are Anita Malfatti, Cícero Dias, Dalton Paula, Danilo Di Prete, Eliseu Visconti, Fulvio Pennacchi, Ismael Nery, Judith Lauand, Maria Martins, Maria Polo, Tarsila do Amaral, Victor Brecheret e Volpi. 

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Biennale Arte 2024 - Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere
Location: Giardini + Arsenale
Curated by Adriano Pedrosa
Exhibition until November 24, 2024

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(1) Rubem Valentim 
Pintura 3, 1966 
Oil on canvas 
39 3/8 x 28 3/4 in 

(2) Rubem Valentim 
Composição Bahia nº1, 1966 
Tempera on canvas 
39 3/4 x 29 in

(3) Rubem Valentim 
Pintura 26, 1965 
Oil on canvas
39 3/4 x 29 in