Guy Brett analyzes the relief carvings on wood done by Sérgio [de] Camargo in the 1960s, and comments on the materials, light, and surface. He mentions the artist’s use of wooden cylinders in a geometric as well as an organic sense, relating them to the “gentleness” of Brasilia. Brett compares Camargo’s sculptural work with works by other notable Venezuelan artists such as Carlos Cruz-Díez, Jesús Soto, and Alejandro Otero, who in his opinion, “revitalize the surface (. . .) operating in the void” that exists “between painting and sculpture.” Brett notes that unlike their European counterparts, Latin American artists are more likely to use raw materials than found materials; he speculates that it might be because such materials are related to architecture, and mentions Brasilia once again. Brett then compares Camargo’s work to the work of Antoni Tàpies and Paul Cézanne, and says that the Brazilian artist takes a “positive, architectural approach.” On the other hand, Tàpies works in a “state of resignation.” Brett also notices that Camargo struggles like Picasso, who sees art as a way to externalize “one’s fear of the unknown.” Brett is concerned with why Camargo’s paintings, produced in an environment not unlike the one in which Cézanne worked—“through an intense involvement with nature,” allow “nature, when closely observed, to reveal the same watercolor structure found in Cézanne’s paintings.” The article includes a number of reproductions of Camargo’s paintings and Cézanne’s watercolors.    

This article about the work of Sérgio [de] Camargo (1930-1990) was published in 1965 in Signals Newsbulletin, the London magazine. Brett used the pseudonym Gerald Turner to sign the articles he published in that important experimental forum devoted to art in the 1960s, writing mainly about Kinetic art and the exchange of values between European and Latin American artists. He met Camargo for the first time the previous year, 1964, in Paris. He took an interest in the Brazilian artist’s career, especially with regard to his transition from three-dimensional sculpture to his “relêvos brancos” (white reliefs), and the dialogue between observer/work that ensued (see “Sergio Camargo: Luz e Sombra” [doc. no. 1232285]).

In Brazil, the critic Ronaldo Brito analyzes what he calls Camargo’s “relêvos moleculares” (molecular reliefs) in an essay called “Order and the Madness of Order” [doc. no. 1110496].

Based in London, the critic Guy Brett (b. 1942) is also a curator and a lecturer on the international circuit. He cofounded a magazine (Newsbulletin of Signals) and a gallery in London together with Paul Keeler, also called Signals. He worked with Mira Schendel to present her solo exhibition at Signals in 1966. Brett has regularly published his essays, which are almost always based on radical or experimental ideas, in international art magazines, and he is the author of a number of monographs. His major contributions include his involvement with Kinetic art from its earliest days in Europe and Venezuela. His best-known books are: Kinetic Art: The Language of Movement (London: Studio Vista, 1968); Force Fields: Phases of the Kinetic (London: Hayward Gallery, 2000); Carnival of Perception: Selected Writings on Art (London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 2004); and in this specific context, Brasil experimental - arte/vida: proposições e paradoxos (org. Kátia Maciel) (Rio de Janeiro: Contra Capa Livraria, 2005).

For a broader view of Brett’s thoughts on Brazilian art, see “Uma cronologia de encontros, 1964-2005” [doc. no. 1111303]. The British critic has published a number of monographs about Brazilian artists. On the subject of Mira Schendel’s radical work, Brett wrote “Ativamente o vazio” [doc. no. 1111214] and Schendel” [doc. no. 1111213]; on the subject of Lygia Clark’s innovations, “In Search of the Body” [doc. no. 1232526]; on his reading of the 1950s and 1960s in Brazil, “Un salto radical” [doc. no. 808389]; and finally, his testimony on the art of the 1970s in Brazil, gathered by Márcio Doctors, “Guy Brett: arte brasileira sem folclore” [doc. no. 1110958].