Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato
David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by Brazilian-born artist Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato (1900–1995). Spanning two floors of the gallery’s London location, this exhibition will mark the first time Lorenzato’s work is being shown in the United Kingdom and the first solo presentation of his work outside of Brazil.
Image: Installation view, Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, David Zwirner, London, 2019
"‘He doesn’t belong to cliques / He paints what he feels like painting / Amen.’ Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato (1900–1995) wrote this prayer on the reverse side of an untitled painting from 1948. And indeed, Lorenzato was an artist who just seemed to follow his heart, with little regard for conventions of genre or style." —Kaira M. Cabañas, Artforum, 2014
"As a painter, Lorenzato is sure about his technique and the modest materials he uses. He draws on the packet of the cigarettes he smokes. His first paintings were sketches made of watercolor or gouache.… He prepares his paint himself by mixing the coloring matters with dextrin. Later, he uses the oil, but not traditionally: the author uses the pigment in Xadrez powder, used in civil construction and flax. He turns the paste into paint and then models with a tool. To work like this, he needs a surface which is not perforated by the metal tool. After several tries with materials like a cardboard, a metal web, a canvas, he decides on a canvas stretched on veneer." —Maria Angélica Melendi, "Lorenzato’s Pure Painting," in Lorenzato, 2011
"For decades, he was considered a regional artist, a naïf or a ‘primitive artist’, even though he never saw himself as such and preferred to self-classify himself as ‘current’. Maybe his work has been seen in these registers because Lorenzato was a self-learner and, as such, was not included in any ism, also being non-existent for the Brazilian art market and not invoking any school or tradition. The path he has trailed makes it evident that he was an authentic outsider, painting whatever he felt like painting, as he himself wrote on the back of one of his paintings. Crowning his marginality as an artist, one fact that counted was the fact that Lorenzato was poor and carried out many trades that can hardly be considered as prestigious, especially that of a wall painter. However, the man and his work are not satisfied with clichés, as his grandeur rests in the modesty of his life and also the commitment of his art." —Laymert Garcia dos Santos, "Lorenzato, the grandeur of modesty," 2014
"This succession of curves, this organic form that gives life to these paintings, are a way for the artist to reflect on abstraction, a topic that is never totally missing from his art and that becomes more evident as we begin to see more of his paintings. The entangled tree branches are another form of approaching the nature as pure form. We can identify the origin of these motifs in the orchards in the backyard, but also in the reforested woods of the industrial suburbs." —Rodrigo Moura, "Notes on Lorenzato," 2014