Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato

While he kept on hand a worn copy of painter Giorgio Vasari’s famous sixteenth-century book on artists of the Italian Renaissance and was known to express admiration for painters such as Cézanne, Van Gogh, Monet, and Manet, Lorenzato operated as a singular and distinctly Brazilian artist—albeit with European roots. Often using geometric shapes to suggest objects in real space, his paintings show a visual parallel to the work of Italian-born Brazilian modernist painter Alfredo Volpi (1896­–1988), who similarly painted everyday subjects in São Paulo.

Of particular prominence in this presentation are paintings of favelas—working-class shantytowns that have become familiar, even quintessential images of informal urbanity and rural culture in Brazil—which as a whole constitute Lorenzato’s largest body of work and earned the artist early fame, due in part to the commercial popularity of Brazilian modern art focused on the subject. He had personally witnessed the construction of a favela near his home in an area used for the reforestation of eucalyptus trees; the subject, both architectural and personal, provided the artist a generative space for formal experimentation.

Lorenzato’s position as a working-class artist—an atypical identity in Brazilian cultural circles until the later decades of the twentieth century—set him apart, both for his perspective on the rural vernacular and for his influence on local contemporaries. Legendary in his hometown, Lorenzato created work that was collected by fellow artists in Belo Horizonte, who introduced it to new audiences in São Paulo when they moved there in the 1990s, bringing wider awareness to the artist’s oeuvre.

Recent critical and institutional attention to Lorenzato’s work has expanded the appreciation of his art far beyond the regional recognition it received during his lifetime. The exhibition in Hong Kong celebrates Lorenzato’s contribution to a global modernist canon, in which the nuances and textures of the artist’s intimate compositions can be considered alongside the universality of his colorful language.

In 2019, Lorenzato’s first solo exhibition outside Brazil was presented at David Zwirner London. In 2022, the artist’s work was included in the major group exhibition Histórias brasileiras at Museu de Arte de São Paulo, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, which was part of a two-year program at the museum celebrating the bicentennial of Brazilian independence. Lorenzato is included in the 60th Venice Biennale, Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, organized by Pedrosa and on view through November 24, 2024.

Lorenzato’s work is represented in public collections internationally, including Fundação Clóvis Salgado, Belo Horizonte; Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte; Museu de Arte de São Paulo; Nouveau Musée National de Monaco; Pinacoteca de São Paulo; and Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Brazil. In 2023, with the support of Brazilian cultural institute Itaú Cultural, the Projeto Lorenzato was established with the mission of identifying and digitally cataloguing the artist’s work.