To the critic Ronaldo Brito (b. 1951), the acceptance of Sérgio Camargo’s “molecular reliefs” on the international scene was unrelated to the sculptural origins of these works. In Brito’s opinion, they functioned as opposites (order/disorder and rigor/chance) in some way representing the conflict between sculpture and plane. In a criticism published in 1964, the Englishman Guy Brett (b. 1942) perceived aspects in Camargo’s work that Brito would later find pleasing. Both critics identified the tension between the geometric and the organic, even if the work is understood as having more to do with painting than sculpture, since the works show the impact of light and its resulting optical effects. In this regard, see Brett’s essay “Camargo,” published in the Signals Newsbulletin, No. 5 (London, December 1964) [see doc. no. 1111304]; later, the English critic analyzed the sculptor’s work in the book Sérgio Camargo: Luz e Sombra (São Paulo: Arauco, 2007) [doc. no. 1232285]. It is interesting to note that Brito’s essay identifies works executed in black Belgian marble (1980s) as key to understanding the “crisis of Modern art.” This is because, in formal terms, these works do not reflect any idea of progress; thus, they must be placed at the margin of what is understood as “capricious works deemed Postmodern.”
Jean Clay (French art historian, critic and journalist) analyzes the sculptor’s work in the text “Sérgio Camargo” [doc. no. 1111190]. In turn, the Brazilian critic Ronaldo Brito writes on the dialectic method at work in Camargo’s “reliefs” in the study “Order and the madness of order” [doc. no. 1110496].
The visual artist Sérgio [de] Camargo (1930–90) was a sculptor and carver of reliefs. The first roots he put down were in Argentina in the 1940s, with the group at the Academia Altamira in Buenos Aires, including artists of the stature of Emilio Pettoruti and Lucio Fontana. After that, the Brazilian artist studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. This text was written during the period after he returned to Brazil from Paris, where he had joined the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV) in the 1960s. The GRAV believed in collective art based on its postulate that the solitary artist was outdated. It carried out research on Kinetic artifacts as well as optical mechanisms and effects using artificial light and movement—ideas that appear in Brito’s text investigating Camargo’s artwork—including the participating eye of the viewer. While he was involved with GRAV, the sculptor concentrated on monochromatic structures with white surfaces and cylindrical reliefs made of wood in which the play of light produces alternations between order and disorder, fullness and void. In the late 1960s, Camargo created works of Carrara marble for public spaces. During that period, he also exhibited his Parisian works at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro.
Ronaldo [Correia de] Brito (b. 1951), from the State of Ceará, is one of the most important and influential art critics operating on the Brazilian art scene. He has published his essays in books, journals and exhibition catalogues, also contributing to the newspaper Opinião. Brito was one of the founders of the journals Malasartes and Gávea. In the 1970s, he was prominent in the art world, and as such, promoted the reexamination of the Neo-Concrete Movement and its legacy in Brazilian contemporary art.
