Otros Proyectos

Art: an experimental exercise of freedom F

February 6, 2018
Art as form, form as content.
Politics and perception in the work of Mario Pedrosa (1900-1981)

To state that Mario Pedrosa is Brazil's greatest thinker of the twentieth century in terms of aesthetics would be, without a shadow of a doubt, a mistake. For Pedrosa exceeds aesthetics, he surpasses it. At one moment he is a philosopher, at another he is dedicated to the theory of Gestalt, at yet another he is discussing with the neo-concrete artists - with Clark and Oiticica - about how perception is established, but Pedrosa is always, and permanently, exercising a political reflection.

In fact, if Mario Pedrosa starts reflecting on art it is because from there he can contribute to liberate man, and if after Salvador Allende's death -after fleeing Chile where he built the Solidarity Museum-, he abdicates art, it is because he sees in politics the only way to build the bridge to that liberation. Because the objective is not art, nor Gestalt Theory, the objective itself is to contribute to the liberation of men and women from their social and mental yokes, from their hierarchies and divisions, reconciling work and pleasure, and, moreover, art and life.

This talk will be a journey through Mário Pedrosa's biography and thought, through 20th century Brazil and through the 20th century itself. For the century and Pedrosa advance together: from social art -Portinari or Kathe Kollwitz- to abstract art -Calder or Mira Schendell-, from Trotskyism in the first half of the 20th century to the founding of the Workers' Party in 1980, and from the proposal to mount a Revolution to the committed and tenacious struggle for the defense of democracy, today essential in the world, in Brazil and in Latin America.

Julia Buenaventura. Art critic and historian with a focus on Latin America. Lives between Colombia and Brazil.

Links: Publication of Mario Pedrosa's texts made by MoMA, 2015. (in Spanish)
http://www.museoreinasofia.es/sites/default/files/dossier_mario_pedrosa_web.pdf

Exhibition on the artists related to and discussed by Pedrosa at the Museo Reina Sofía, 2017.
https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/publication_pdf/3232/Pedrosa_PREVIEW.pdf?1456334850