The art critic Roberto Pontual wrote this text for the exhibition 3x4 - Grandes Formatos organized in 1983 by the Centro Empresarial Rio. The essay’s confessional tone is nuanced by the author’s description of the driving spirit behind the works and the art scene of that decade: the so-called “Geração ’80.” Pontual introduces the ‘generation’ via a retrospective review of the recent art scene in Brazil and provides insights into what was happening on the international stage at the time. He posits links between these artists and what he called a “sensitive geometry,” a concept he energetically defends throughout his writings. This essay outlines the basis of his subsequent book:“Explode[AB1]  Geração!”

 [AB1]No translation.

Despite the diversity among the artists who participated in the 3x4 - Grandes Formatos exhibition, it managed to transmit what would become the prevalent narrative of subsequent exhibitions such as Como vai você, Geração 80? Many authors considered this to be the historical framework of what would be called—in the manner of the reactionary Rappel à l'ordre of the beginning of the century that again set painting against experimentalism—the “return to painting,” represented in Rio de Janeiro by the “Geração ‘80.”

A native of Recife in the state of Pernambuco, Roberto Pontual worked as a journalist and a literary and art critic in Rio de Janeiro. In 1969, he published the Dicionário de Artes Plásticas, a point of reference in Brazilian art. An active participant in Brazilian art circles since the 1960s, he was one of the major art critics in Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s. He was also the director of exhibitions at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna) from 1973 to 1976. In 1978 he organized the exhibition Geometria sensível at theMAM-RJ, for which he earned still more notoriety. Due to the tensions produced by the military dictatorship, he voluntarily exiled himself to Paris in 1980 where he lived until his death in 1992.

Please refer to the ICAA digital archive for the text written by Roberto Pontual entitled Explode Geração! (Rio de Janeiro: Avenir, 1984), (doc. no. 1110991). In it, the author attempts to articulate his personal, at times literary, views on Brazilian art of the 1980s, specifically as regards artists such as Mônica Nador and Ana Maria Tavares in São Paulo, and Leda Catunda, Sérgio Romagnolo, and Beatriz Milhazes in Rio de Janeiro. See also the manifesto he wrote about that generation in “Semana nacional de poesia de vanguarda: comunicado e conclusões” (doc. no. 1110501); for additional reading on this perspective see Ricardo Basbaum’s “Pintura dos anos 80: Algumas observações críticas” (doc. no. 1110972).

[As complementary reading see in the archive the following texts written by Roberto Pontual: “Corpos de afago e dor = Bodies of caress and pain” (doc. no. 1111211), “Do mundo, a América Latina. Entre as geometrias, a sensível” (doc. no. 771399), “Os dois Brasis” (doc. no. 1110617), “Em torno do sistema da arte” (doc. no. 1110554), “Expor: impor ou propor?” (doc. no. 1110954), “Imagens da imagem” (doc. no. 1110688), “A natureza reposta em arte” (doc. no. 1111359), “Notas sôbre a xilogravura popular brasileira” (doc. no. 1111031), “Um panorama brasileiro” (doc. no. 1110604), “O quase mago Roberto Magalhães” (doc. no.1111080), “Sistema de arte em questão: o que fazer?” (doc. no. 1111082), and “Waltércio Caldas: luz e enigma” (doc. no. 1110563)].