2024-03-01 22:52:04
The longevity of a project depends on its ability to update without losing its essence. Raquel Arnaud’s five decades of presence in the art market are currently being celebrated, with an exhibition that shares highlights of the gallery’s trajectory alongside artists from various generations. “Raquel Arnaud Gallery – 50 years” is curated by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti and attests to the gallerist’s vigor in valuing contemporary art, especially its abstract and geometric aspects.
The gallery
Created in 1973 under the name “Gabinete de Arte”, Raquel Arnaud’s commercial project passed through several offices in São Paulo until arriving at the current Rua Fidalga, in Vila Madalena. Since its visits to Avenidas Nove de Julho, Avenida Brigadeiro Luís Antônio and Rua Artur de Azevedo, the gallery has been installed in architectural projects by references such as Lina Bo Bardi, Ruy Ohtake and Felippe Crescenti.
Before opening his business, Arnaud had worked at MASP in the late 1960s and interned at the Collectio gallery. The dealer also worked with Rede Globo’s Arte Global gallery, developing work that linked visual arts with advertising on the television network.
Half a century of art
The commemorative exhibition on display at the gallery presents a timeline with important moments in the gallery’s history. Catalogs, invitations, books and various documents can be seen by the public for the first time. The exhibition features more than 40 works that make up a project in transformation: throughout the exhibition, there will be an alternation of works by artists who, over the years, have been part of this history.
In five decades of work as a gallerist, Raquel Arnaud represented definitive names for Brazilian art, following the various developments in the abstract field. Since the mid-20th century, geometric abstract art has been the center of great debate as it entered institutional and commercial spaces in Brazil.
Engaging abstract artists in Brazil since its first years of operation, the dealer has always maintained the gallery’s tone, bringing together important productions on the national scene such as Sérgio Camargo, Hércules Barsotti, Sérvulo Esmeraldo and Mira Schendel.
Arnaud recalls that the award-winning engraver from São Paulo Arthur Luiz Piza was the first artist to hold a solo show in his gallery, building a partnership that lasted until the end of the artist’s life in 2017. Piza achieved great prominence with a vast abstract production, being awarded in two editions of the São Paulo Biennial, in 1953 and 1959.
Lygia Clark and Willys de Castro, exponents of the Neoconcrete Movement, are also part of the gallery’s history. In one of the most important movements in Brazilian contemporary art, neoconcretists subverted a series of concrete art paradigms, exploring the field of color, movements, spatiality and the public’s relationship with the work. In 1986, Castro held his last solo show at Galeria Raquel Arnaud, the same period in which Clark participated in his last group show at the gallery.
There was also space for productions with a critical and political content responding to the period of the military dictatorship, such as the works of Carmela Gross and Anna Maria Maiolino. For her contribution to the world of visual arts, Maiolina will be honored at the next edition of the Venice Biennale, receiving the honorary Golden Lion.
Other aspects found the gallery a space for appreciation and visibility. Understanding the possibilities of dialogue between different productions, Arnaud has already held exhibitions by names such as Regina Silveira, Lygia Pape and Vik Muniz. Highlights of kinetic art such as Almandrade, Jesús Rafael Soto and Carlos Cruz-Diez are also among the names present in the gallery’s history.
Legacy and research
In 1997, Arnaud founded the Institute of Contemporary Art (IAC), with the aim of cataloging works by abstract artists, such as those already mentioned. The institute is known for its contribution to the field of research, having residency programs for artists, educators and various types of researchers.
For some years now, Raquel Arnaud has been part of the scope of galleries that exhibit at Artsoul, the most relevant contemporary art marketplace in Brazil, in a worldwide movement of attention to the commercialization of works of art in the virtual sphere.
In a recent article by Bárbara Blum for Folha de São Paulo, Arnaud is among the most influential in an art market dominated by women. Due to her pioneering spirit, the gallerist influences new generations in the market, while maintaining an active work.
Raquel Arnaud’s presence in the art market is, more than long-lasting and pioneering, indisputably relevant. The coherence of her representations and the look at dialogue with different productions attest to the quality of a work that is a reference for galleries that have emerged in recent years.
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