Canvas

If the heart of the largest art museum in Latin America is its rich collection of 14 thousand works, the oxygen that keeps it alive and pulsating is the constant dialogue with the artists. As a repertoire builder, the Oscar Niemeyer Museum has as one of its premises to make the best of contemporary visual arts production accessible to visitors. That's what MON delivers with this exhibition. 

“Tela” (“Canvas”) is the name of Leila Pugnaloni's exhibition, but it could also be the codename of the artist from Rio de Janeiro, who has been living in Curitiba for decades and who had in Paraná the starting point of her extensive and intense artistic career.  

Leila uses canvases to reveal her singular reading of the world, the urban observations of her wanderings, feminine impressions as soft as they are strong, in a restlessness that has accompanied her for a long time. It is on canvas that she prints and immortalizes her trademark.

A profusion of colors and large-scale paintings share space here with delicate India ink drawings, the fruits of her everyday observations, in addition to drawings made in situ, which personalize the exhibition room.

Her emotional relationship with space is visible and goes beyond the exhibition's environment. Leila Pugnaloni spent her childhood in Brasilia and by carefully observing the lines and curves of Oscar Niemeyer's work, she had her artistic work touched by a subtle influence.

Having this important individual exhibition organized by the Museum with the same name as the great architect is without a doubt full of emotion, on both sides. Certainly, the public will also be sensitized.

Juliana Vellozo Almeida Vosnika 
Chief Executive Officer
Oscar Niemeyer Museum

Tela – Leila Pugnaloni

Visual artist Leila Pugnaloni is from Rio de Janeiro and spent a good part of her childhood in Brasília, where she learned to observe the precise lines of Lúcio Costa and the curved lines of Oscar Niemeyer, references that influenced her throughout her life. Later, in Curitiba, the artist assimilated her hybrid vision of the world, inherited by her father's wit and her mother's delicacy. Owner of a libertarian and restless spirit, in 1982 she flew to New York, in the United States, where she developed techniques at the renowned art school The Art Students League, which were decisive in her career. Back in Curitiba, she drank at the source of Modern Brazilian Art and Modern American Art and flirted with the creations of other artists such as Alfredo Volpi, Ione Saldanha, Darel Valença, and her friend, Anna Letycia. Leila then began what can be called the artist's work, with two very delineated strands: drawing and painting. 

The exhibition “Tela – Leila Pugnaloni” (“Canvas”), hosted by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum (MON), reveals the artist's recent research and includes other series, occasional interventions on the gallery walls, and a biographical section. In the latter, a set of items is presented that goes back to the artist's trajectory, through photographs from the collection, graphic materials from exhibitions, publications, a collection of articles, articles, and journalistic notes, composing a brief history of her work.

The series “Módulos de Luz” (“Light Modules”), started in 1992, reveals a peculiarity in the artist's work in that she appropriates the luminous and colored reflections of her painting, emitted on the surface of the wall where they are affixed, in such a way that the space between one module and another is filled with colors that arise from the incidence of light. It is a simple and deliberate effect that provides unusual discoveries. As the viewer moves in front of the work, he/she will be able to perceive the three different faces of each module and the combination of volumes and colors between them. Although it presents important aspects in its three-dimensionality, the work of the series “Mata-juntas” makes a counterpoint to the other works, since it deals with the chromatic possibilities, whose wooden structure has a strong appeal to the architecture and construction technique of the houses of Polish immigrants. 

Over a generous wall of approximately 30 linear meters, the artist presents the result of her search for new chromatic experiences, from which she found different textures and weaves, whose work impacts due to the vibration achieved by these hues. The reflections of the fluorescent pigments used by Leila Pugnaloni cause a luminous effect on the space that evokes the modular constructions and Hélio Oiticica's creative thinking about colors. The different shades of colors meticulously crafted by the artist can be seen in unpublished works in acrylic paint on canvas, with equal dimensions of two meters in height by one meter in width, produced during the period of social isolation, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

In an area at the back of the gallery, 40 small-format drawings are presented, in India ink on paper, based on the artist's research on the human figure and ways of living. With a bamboo stick and ink, Leila has been studying lines and shapes for three decades, formatting a kind of chronicle of her passage through life. She learns and teaches with her work on the drawing board or in the workshops, given in her studio or museums, such as here at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art of Paraná, and Museum of Art of Rio (MAR), or even in corporate environments like Rede Globo de Televisão, in Rio de Janeiro. The artist developed a concept in which the body itself serves as an instrument to perform the movements and gestures that reveal the lines drawn on paper. In addition to the works presented in frames, Leila Pugnaloni drew directly on the surface of the walls in this exhibition environment.

It is quite true that the improbable is present in her painting and also in her drawing, but the artist's brushstrokes result in precise and concrete forms, while her sinuous lines are of an undeniable poetic lightness. Leila devotes herself to the craft of art with great strength and makes her femininity echo in subtlety, harmony, and passion for life.

Marco Antonio Teobaldo
Curator