This article by Olívio Tavares de Araújo discusses the exhibition Pintura como meio (1983) held at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP), which at the time was directed by Aracy Amaral. The exhibition brought together works by Ana Maria Tavares, Ciro Cozzolino, Leda Catunda, Sérgio Niculitcheff, and Sérgio Romagnolo, five artists between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-six, most of them graduates of the Escola de Arte of the FAAP (Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado). Tavares de Araújo praises the artists for the vitality they demonstrate in committing to a medium “so often declared dead.” He places special emphasis on the “maturity” of the paintings by Cozzolino and Catunda, although he also points out that some of the works resort to “tricks” as they convey a sensibility of “contemporariness.”

In this article written in the early eighties, Tavares de Araújo places young painters emerging on the São Paulo art scene within the international “return to painting.” In reviewing the show Pintura como meio [Painting as Medium] held in 1983 at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP), the author underscores the support that that institution has offered “new painting.” He has certain reservations about what he considers a sort of affected “passing fashion” in work of this sort, a defect evident in paintings by Ana Maria Tavares, Ciro Cozzolino, Leda Catunda, Sérgio Niculitcheff and Sérgio Romagnolo. All of those painters hang their work directly on the museum walls, foregoing the canvas stretchers “although in some cases the vestiges of the original stretcher makes itself felt.” 

Olívio Tavares de Araújo is a journalist, art critic, and filmmaker who has produced over thirty short films. In the seventies, he was the editor of visual arts and classical music for the magazine Veja that was widely distributed throughout Brazil. He is currently an art critic for the magazine Isto É.The various exhibitions he has curated focus on the Italian-born artist Alfredo Volpi (1896–1988). His books include Volpi: a construção da catedral (São Paulo: Museu de Arte Moderna, 1981) and Dois estudos sobre Volpi (Rio de Janeiro: FUNARTE, 1986).

For a related text, see Olívio Tavares de Araújo’s “Partes para um ensaio (d’après Baravelli)” [doc. no. 1111204].