This essay by Sônia Salzstein on Frida Baranek’s sculpture was written for the Aperto della XLIV Biennale Internazionale d’Arte di Venezia in 1990. In it, Salzstein compares Baranek’s work to the production of a whole generation of artists that questioned both the form and the material of three-dimensional work.
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1961, sculptor Frida Baranek participated in the famous exhibition Como vai você, Geração 80?, an event held at the Parque Lage in Rio that marked the course of art in the eighties. Her outstanding production was featured in the 1989 São Paulo Biennial and in the 1990 Biennale di Venezia. During that same period, the artist moved to São Paulo, and in recent years, she has spent a great deal of time in Paris, Berlin, and New York.
Art critic and researcher Sônia Salzstein has done incisive work on the art world and in art history. From 1989 to 1992, she was the head of the visual arts division of the Centro Cultural São Paulo, where she devised a program geared to young and emerging artists. She is a professor in the Visual Arts Department of the Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo (ECA-USP). She is a member of the curatorial board of the Fundação Iberê Camargo, which oversees the Mercosul Biennial. Books she has authored include the monographs: Volpi (Silvia Roesler/Campos Gerais, 2000), Franz Weissmann (CosacNaify, 2003), and Diálogos com Iberê Camargo (CosacNaify, 2004).