The Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum analyzes the work of the sculptor and painter Sérgio Romagnolo. The writer emphasizes that Romagnolo’s investigations related to common spaces actually involve the entire process in which the artist’s task is tied to reasoning of a Duchampian nature. Other concepts related to that line of reasoning are both “fetishization” and the specific “institutionalization” of the object. This strategy offers the opportunity to discuss both the limitations and expansions of the field of art. Basbaum goes on to emphasize Romagnolo’s various choices “for malleability, for an almost artisanal relationship with material that is unquestionably industrial” and for the appropriation of holy figures that are treated as “common objects.” Another choice the artist makes is to appropriate daily objects (which end up being made sacred), thus calling art into question, as if art itself were a mere object of devotion.

Starting in the 1980s, Sérgio Romagnolo (b. 1957) began to be well known among contemporary artists in Brazil; this is why he was included in what was known as the “Geração 80” (Generation of 1980s). As we might expect, his artwork was not limited to what is called the “return to painting”, since the artist delved into other media such as sculpture.

Ricardo Basbaum is an artist, professor, critic, and curator who also appeared on the art scene in the 1980s. In the next decade—the 1990s—he was a member of the group Visorama, and also editor of the journal Ítem. He was responsible for coordination of AGORA (Agência de Organismos Artísticos), as well as later on the Espaço Agora-Capacete. In addition, he was one of the curators for the exhibition Panorama de Arte Brasileira (2001), and some years later, his art approach would be included in the Documenta (in Kassel in 2007). 

Regarding the 1980s generation in Brazil, there is a catalogue of the exhibition Como vai você, Geração 80? (July 1984), edited by Jorge Guinle Filho, and a book by Roberto Pontual, Explode Geração (Rio de Janeiro: Avenir, 1984). The book situates the author’s personal and literary perspective in the midst of the artwork being created in Brazil in the 1980s. The artists referred to include Mónica Nador and Ana Tavares in São Paulo as well as Leda Catunda, Sérgio Romagnolo, and Beatriz Milhazes in Rio.

For additional information, see the manifesto in which Pontual makes common cause with that generation [doc. no. 1110501]. To supplement Basbaum’s focus in this essay, see another one he wrote in this regard: “Pintura dos anos 80: algumas observações críticas” [doc. no. 1110972].