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| Rubem Valentim | |
|---|---|
| Name | Rubem Valentim |
| Birth date | 1922-07-28 |
| Birth place | Salvador, Bahia, Brazil |
| Death date | 1991-04-19 |
| Death place | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| Nationality | Brazilian |
| Field | Painting, sculpture, engraving |
| Training | Escola de Belas Artes da Universidade Federal da Bahia, Escola Nacional de Belas Artes |
Rubem Valentim was a Brazilian painter, sculptor, engraver, and educator whose work synthesized Afro-Brazilian religious iconography with modernist abstraction. Working across painting, relief, metalwork, and graphic arts, he developed a distinctive symbolic lexicon that engaged with Yoruba-derived Candomblé imagery, Brazilian modernism, and international movements such as Concrete art, Constructivism, and Minimalism. Valentim participated in major artistic institutions and exhibitions across Latin America and Europe, influencing generations of artists, curators, and thinkers.
Born in Salvador in the state of Bahia, Valentim grew up amid the cultural milieus of Pelourinho, Church of Bonfim, and communities shaped by Afro-Brazilian religious traditions like Candomblé and Umbanda. He studied at the Escola de Belas Artes da Universidade Federal da Bahia before moving to Rio de Janeiro to enroll at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes, where he encountered professors and peers associated with the legacies of Anita Malfatti, Tarsila do Amaral, Cândido Portinari, and Di Cavalcanti. His formation included exposure to the collections of the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, the exhibitions of the Instituto de Arte Contemporânea, and the discourses circulating in publications associated with Revista do Brasil and Correio da Manhã.
Valentim's career took shape through participation in salons, biennials, and artistic movements that connected Brazil to transnational currents, including the São Paulo Art Biennial, the Venice Biennale, and exchanges with artists from Argentina, Uruguay, France, and the United States. He worked alongside contemporaries such as Geraldo de Barros, Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Amilcar de Castro, Willys de Castro, and Lygia Pape, while engaging dialogues with critics and curators from institutions like the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro and the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo. His practice encompassed painting on canvas, painted wood reliefs, metal sculptures, and graphic prints produced with workshops connected to figures in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro printmaking networks.
Valentim developed a symbolic alphabet of geometric signs, referencing sacred diagrams, ritual objects, and vestiges of Yoruba cosmology as mediated through Candomblé and the iconography of orixás like Exú, Oxóssi, Iansã, and Oxum. His reliefs and panels often juxtaposed circular, cross-like, and spiral motifs that evoked parallels with African masks, Mesoamerican glyphs, and European modernist devices found in the work of Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevich, and Josef Albers. Themes of memory, ritual, displacement, and identity appear across works that dialogued with literary and political figures, including references resonant with writers like Jorge Amado, Ariano Suassuna, and Joaquim Nabuco, as well as composers and musicians from Bahia such as Carmelita Tropicana affiliates and contemporaneous performers who worked within the cultural circuits of Samba, Afoxé, and Capoeira events.
Valentim exhibited nationally and internationally in venues and events tied to institutions such as the São Paulo Art Biennial, the Bienal de São Paulo, the Venice Biennale, the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, and galleries linked to curators from Instituto Tomie Ohtake-era networks. He received awards and honors presented by municipal and federal cultural agencies including entities related to the Brazilian Ministry of Culture and municipal cultural secretariats in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. His work was reviewed in periodicals circulated by editors and critics associated with O Estado de S. Paulo, Folha de S.Paulo, and cultural supplements connected to the Jornal do Brasil.
As an educator and mentor Valentim taught and influenced students through workshops and academic posts associated with art schools in Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza, and Rio de Janeiro, collaborating with pedagogues and theorists from institutions like the Universidade Federal da Bahia, the Universidade de São Paulo, and the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. He participated in seminars and panels alongside scholars and artists connected to Ailton Krenak-style indigenous studies dialogues, Afro-Brazilian cultural activists, and visual theorists influenced by texts circulated by publishers such as Editora Perspectiva and Cosac Naify networks. His pedagogical reach intersected with movements addressing cultural policy debates within agencies like IPHAN and civic initiatives linked to municipal museums and cultural centers.
Valentim's corpus is held in major public and private collections, including the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), the Museu Afro Brasil, the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, and international repositories that collaborated with Brazilian curators on traveling exhibitions to institutions such as the Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, and the Museo Reina Sofía. Retrospectives and scholarly work on his oeuvre have been undertaken by researchers at universities and cultural institutes including the Universidade Federal da Bahia, the Universidade de São Paulo, the Instituto Moreira Salles, and foundations connected to collectors and critics linked to the histories of Modernism in Brazil and transatlantic exchanges. His symbolic lexicon continues to inform contemporary artists, curators, and scholars invested in Afro-Brazilian heritage and geometric abstraction.
Category:Brazilian painters Category:20th-century Brazilian artists Category:Artists from Salvador, Bahia