In a text about the work of Daniel Senise, critic Fernando Cocchiarale presents a reading of the retro tendency known as the “retorno à pintura” that took place in the eighties. Cocchiarale underscores the unique nature of the artist’s work. He argues that Senise’s painting incites debate on “the image,” not as representation or as “presentation,” but as something “insinuated in the cracks between those two notions.” The text also discusses Senise’s career and the development of his production. 

Daniel Senise emerged in the Brazilian art scene in the eighties. His work was initially considered a prime example of what was called the “Geração 80.” His later production changed course, and in the nineties, it gained greater recognition.

Before focusing on curatorial work and cultural administration, Fernando Cocchiarale (b. 1952), for a brief period in the seventies, was an experimental artist. During that period, he was one of the engines behind the Project Room at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio). Since the eighties, he has done outstanding work in art criticism and curating. He has served as the director of the Fundação Nacional de Arte (Funarte) and of MAM-Rio.

Brazilian artists and critics have examined the ramifications of painting from the eighties: in “Pintura dos anos 80: algumas observações críticas” [doc. no. 1110972], artist Ricardo Basbaum comments on “the return to painting in that period”; critic Frederico Morais’s “Leonilson: a Geração 80 ficou para trás” [doc. no. 1110961] addresses the artist Leonilson, an emblem of the “Geração 80”; his “Gosto deste cheiro de pintura” [doc. no. 1110992] discusses the pictorial values essential to that period.