André Ricardo

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  • André Ricardo: Imaginarium

    24 May - 28 July 2023
  • André Ricardo's compositions present a broad repertoire of images from his childhood that merge with its landscape and reflect itself...

    André Ricardo's compositions present a broad repertoire of images from his childhood that merge with its landscape and reflect itself in everyday experiences. The paintings tend to be iconic and ambiguous with a gesture of suspension of time, inviting the observer to project their own imagery repertoire. 

     

  • Growing up

  • “I can only talk about painting, by painting.”

    -André Ricardo

  • Painting

    "A young artist who practiced representing the reality that surrounded him, when he translates the memories of his wanderings through São Paulo into the territory of painting, he translates them into schemes he understands as fundamentally current: the constructive schemata.

     

    Involved with the formal issues that structured his work, André became increasingly concerned with that tradition to which he had joined almost by default. He let it invade his priorities, putting into the background another interest always present in his conscience: the need for a dialogue between his work and Brazilian reality. Thus, it was from the events that took place in the country between 2015-2016 that the artist established what would be the first "route correction" of his career: impregnated by the issues surrounding Brazil at that time, it begins to become clear to the painter that the structural concern he maintained with the constituent elements of painting—the plane, the line and the color— no longer enough to appease his desire to establish himself more deeply in the social and political reality of his surroundings.

     

    After all, his paintings had long since ceased to be characterized as abstractions of his experiences through São Paulo: limited to manifestations within the constructive tradition. It was from this awareness that André Ricardo brought into his poetics other aspects of his wanderings in São Paulo: he began to be interested in aspects of the vernacular architecture of the city—especially that which he found in his walks through Campo Limpo, another neighborhood in the city he had moved to – allowing himself to be impregnated by these forms. Little by little, André began to populate his paintings with forms taken from the façades of the neighborhood's residences, highlighting the constructive structures that still remained in his work."

     

    - Tadeu Chiarelli, "André Ricardo: between what to paint and how to paint," 2021

     

  • The bright and festive chromatic vocabulary that characterizes André Ricardo's paintings are directly linked to the use of egg tempera,...

    The bright and festive chromatic vocabulary that characterizes André Ricardo's paintings are directly linked to the use of egg tempera, a technique that he has been researching for ten years. He first chooses the linen or wood for the work's support, and then, he primes the surface. This complex pre-industrial process allows him to create a deeper sensitivity towards colors, expanding his control over their effects in the painting.

  • Exhibitions

    André Ricardo's most recent solo exhibition Da pintura necessária (2023) was curated by Claudinei Roberto da Silva at the Iberê Foundation, Porto Alegre, Brazil, and featured 56 works produced with egg tempera.

     
    "The mature pictorial production of André Ricardo, of African descent, of proletarian origin, shown in this exhibition, is the result of years of research and day-long work. Among the artists of his generation, rare are those who have dedicated themselves so devoutly to the task of sedimenting a painting that, like that of Iberê Camargo, contains a social critique that does not compromise the formal character of the works, but, on the contrary, makes them denser."
     
    -Claudinei Roberto da Silva

  • "If we find in André Ricardo's paintings echoes of the Afro-diasporic civilization, of the history of Brazilian art and of the northeastern diaspora, it is because such references are constituents of this artistic project, they are not extrinsic to it, on the contrary, they are intrinsic and, therefore, organic...."

    -Claudinei Roberto da Silva

  • In the Studio

    Brooklyn, NY

  • Videos

    Enjoy this video selection of André Ricardo where you can find him speaking about his artistic process and watch him work!

  • André Ricardo's Painting Process

  • Nicole Pallecchi: "Time with André Ricardo

      
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  • Publications

  • Imaginarium: EXHIBITED WORKS