Emmanuel Nassar

Emmanuel Nassar (Capanema, PA, 1949)

Emmanuel Nassar is a painter and illustrator, who also creates installations and painted reliefs. In 1969, after a trip to Europe, he decided to study architecture, graduating from the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) in 1974. He began his artistic production with acrylic on canvas and later began exploring techniques such as wood relief. In 1980, he became a professor of art education at UFPA.

In 1981, he created the three-dimensional work Recepcôr. From this work, he began producing paintings depicting small mechanisms with axles, cranks, and colored plates, also incorporating everyday objects such as bottles. In some works, he evoked local popular culture through vibrant colors and geometric shapes inspired by houses and market stalls.

In 1985, he developed a new research project with works that reinterpreted drawings and paintings found in bars and public restrooms. In other works, he combined images from the world of consumerism with elements recurrent in the suburbs of his hometown.

In 1998, he created the installation "Flags" at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM/SP) and the State Museum of Pará, appropriating 143 flags from municipalities in Pará, which were distributed across the walls of the museums. In 1999, with the work "Incêndio," he received the grand prize at the 6th Cuenca Biennial in Ecuador.

Critical Commentary

With a degree in architecture and experience in advertising, Emmanuel Nassar, from the early 1980s onward, guided his work through a dialogue between two visual traditions: the popular tradition, where vibrant colors in geometric shapes are used as ornaments for homes, shacks, shop windows, etc., and the constructive and geometric tradition, which marked and still marks a significant part of Brazilian erudite artistic production.

While, at the beginning of his career, the artist still played with describing or representing this boundary between the popular and the erudite, from 1988 onward, his work became more objective. Nassar stopped painting solely on canvas and incorporated other materials, such as brass, pieces of wood, duratex, bottles, hammers, lamp sockets, and neon lights. In Gambiarra (1988), the work lies between painting and object. In 1989, he presented the installation "Fachada" at the 20th São Paulo International Biennial. In it, he recreated a small-town circus. Inside the circus, he exhibited some works closer to the subject.

In 1998, the artist created the installation "Flags" at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art (MAM/SP) and the Pará State Museum. He appropriated 143 flags from municipalities in Pará, which were displayed on the walls of the museums. The work involved the participation of the state's residents, who sent the flags to the artist. In 2000, by photographing colorful forms found in the daily life of Pará's cities, the artist "revealed" the original source of his earlier paintings: a fundamentally photographic gaze, a question that poses further challenges for his poetics.

Reviews

"(...) Working in acrylic on canvas, and more recently exploring other media, such as wood relief, Nassar's painting stands out among contemporary trends for its inspiration in suburban themes, incorporating symbolic or figurative elements observed or created from handcrafted visual communication posters exhibited in Belém, Pará. (...) A decentralized composition inspired by popular geometricism, this MAC (Sonoros Brasil) canvas is surrounded by a brightly colored frame-like margin containing six freehand diamonds that leap, from a perceptive point of view, before the observer's gaze, which wanders from one element to another against the vibrant background."
Aracy Amaral
AMARAL, Aracy (Org.). Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo: profile of a collection. Foreword by Ana Mae Barbosa; text by Aracy Amaral, Sônia Salzstein. São Paulo: Techint Engenharia, 1988. 391 p. , ill. color.

"From his world, the artist cuts, highlights details, reinvents dramas. His sources are twofold: the popular and the suburban (...) What most caught the viewer's attention (...) was the artist's guiltless and unprejudiced gaze. When he denounced poverty (...) he transformed his denunciation into a visual experience, moving miles beyond the pamphleteering and the anecdotal. His gaze was participatory, without being begging. Demanding, without being demanding (...). Gradually, always with a critical eye, the artist incorporated into his work images as disparate as advertising illustrations, product labels, and even truck bed decorations. All of this in large fields of color where elements taken from the popular imagination found their visual space as parts of an almost abstract composition. Maturity gave Nassar something he had lacked until then: humor. In paintings (...) figurative elements (...) receive a falsely primitive treatment that allows the artist to ironize the very technique. Banal objects acquire, within this humorous formal game, an iconic value. Playing with scale, the artist manages to convey to the canvas the same feeling of insignificance that affects the human being who encounters Grande Rio. We occupy a tiny part of the physical space, just as the figures occupy only a small portion of the pictorial space (...). With the maturity that allows him to draw on the folkloric and the regional without falling into their traps, Nassar charts his own path."
João Cândido Galvão
GALVÃO, João Cândido. Popular and Suburban. Guia das Artes, São Paulo, v. 3, n. 13, p. 61-62, 1989.

"(...) Nassar is not an artist who simply appropriates a universe of popular colors and forms to naively extol the 'purity' and 'creativity' of the brave people of the North. Aware of the supposed trivialization and exhaustion of erudite visual languages, Nassar realized that these popular elements mentioned above bore similarities that were, at the very least, destabilizing to the concepts that governed (and still govern) one of the greatest artistic traditions of this century in Brazil and abroad: Constructivism, which in Brazil bifurcated into the Concrete and Neo-Concrete strands. (...) the artist actually ends up zeroing out the two languages, allowing his work to survive as a powerful and colorful short-circuit in the gears that connect—and disintegrate—these two traditions. We could quickly compare a painting by Nassar with one by Hércules Barsotti, one of the leading Brazilian painters to emerge with Neocretism. In Barsotti's work, it is the rigorously crafted colors that fill the visual field, creating forms that tend to lead the viewer to concepts of lyricism, order, and purity. In Nassar's paintings, the truth of the colors constituting the painting's field is problematized by the deliberate insecurity of the lines and/or by the unexpected inclusion of elements decidedly alien to the constructive 'order': crude images of severed human limbs, illusionistic representations of nails and other instruments... Even the initials of the artist's name ('E' and 'N') are in no way intended to attest to the two-dimensionality of the plane (so dear to the erudite Constructivist tradition). Incorporated into the painting, they tend to fill it with a symbolic, even autobiographical, meaning practically nonexistent in erudite Constructivist art. What does Nassar intend with his painting? The same as his generational colleagues: to destabilize the consecrated, to bring lyricism and humor to a tradition; to deny the notion of art as a language capable of offering the viewer a predictable and a priori message of the reality that... fence".
Tadeu Chiarelli
CHIARELLI, Tadeu. About Brazil, by Emmanuel Nassar. In: PARÁ ART SALON, 1997, Belém. Borders. Presentation by Lucidéa Maiorana. Belém: Romulo Maiorana Foundation: Lauro Sodré Palace/State Museum, 1997. p. 48.

"Emmanuel Nassar belongs to the lineage of artists who dwell on the world and gather from it the substance of their expression. And what interests him most are the images and things considered too simple: the crude paintings and the artifacts and architecture belonging to the poorest strata of his native Belém. 
It is a fact that we still insist on judging existing images and objects from the perspective of a cultured gaze, as if everything were conceived at the level of high culture. The issue is insupportable because it is so anachronistic, which does not prevent it from continuing to prevail in some corners of our country. Indeed, everything that is produced outside the cultured standard is viewed with disdain, believing that so-called popular expression is nothing more than a degradation, a clumsy, if not degraded, reproduction of a higher order. (...) 
Nassar has always attracted attention for the delicacy and interest with which he returns to what is banal and humble in the world. Before his eyes, the margins of social life, which in the case of Belém are the banks of each of the filaments of the liquid web of rivers, are the stage where lyrical lessons of human ingenuity are performed, of its inexhaustible capacity to symbolize and improvise in the face of a lack of means. Nassar is the poet of the precarious, of the makeshift, of the makeshift, of the imaginative solution and the hidden design, who surprises with the vigor with which, before our eyes, actualizes our atavistic desire for expression in the face of the infinite richness of the world. And he carries out his work without concealing his class origins, his condition as a sweetened person, with a higher education. His poetic project has been affirming itself in the construction of an amalgam between his repertoire and that which experience, coupled with popular expression, offers him as a living juice."
Agnaldo Farias
FARIAS, Agnaldo. Nassar's dream. In: NASSAR, Emmanuel. Flags. Presentation by Paulo Chaves Fernandes; text by Agnaldo Farias, Benedito Nunes. São Paulo: MAM, 1998.

Solo Exhibitions

1979 - Belém PA, Brazil – Solo exhibition at Galeria Theodoro Braga
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ, Brazil – Solo exhibition at Galeria Macunaíma
1986 - Belém PA, Brazil – Solo exhibition at Galeria Elf
1987 - Brasília DF, Brazil – Emmanuel Nassar: Paintings, at Espaço Capital Arte Contemporânea
1988 - Belém PA, Brazil – Solo exhibition at Galeria Arte Liberal
1988 - Belém PA, Brazil – Solo exhibition at Galeria Rômulo Maiorana
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ, Brazil – Solo exhibition at Galeria Saramenha
1989 - Amsterdam, Netherlands – Solo exhibition at Pulitzer Art Gallery
1989 - São Paulo SP, Brazil – Solo exhibition at Galeria Luisa Strina
1990 - Berlin, Germany – Art Brasil Berlin: Emmanuel Nassar, at Galeria Nalepa
1991 - Campo Grande MS, Brazil – Solo exhibition at Itaugaleria
1992 - Amsterdam, Netherlands – Solo exhibition at Pulitzer Art Gallery
1992 - São Paulo SP, Brazil – Solo exhibition at Galeria Luisa Strina
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ, Brazil – Solo exhibition at Galeria Thomas Cohn
1995 - São Paulo SP, Brazil – Solo exhibition at Galeria Luisa Strina
1995 - São Paulo SP, Brazil – Solo exhibition at CCSP
1996 - Belém PA, Brazil – Solo exhibition at Galeria Theodoro Braga
1996 - Freiburg, Germany – Solo exhibition at Galeria Ruta Correa
1996 - Niterói RJ, Brazil – Emmanuel Nassar at Galeria de Arte UFF
1997 - Barsikow, Germany – Solo exhibition at Galerie Barsikow
1997 - Berlin, Germany – Solo exhibition at Galerie Barsikow
1997 - Cologne, Germany – Solo exhibition at Galerie Thomas Zander
1997 - Köln, Germany – Solo exhibition at Galerie Thomas Zander
1998 - Belém PA, Brazil – Bandeiras, at Museu do Estado do Pará
1998 - São Paulo SP, Brazil – Bandeiras, at MAM/SP
1998 - São Paulo SP, Brazil – Bandeiras, at MAM/SP
1998 - Belém PA, Brazil – Bandeiras, at Museu do Estado do Pará
1999 - Barsikow, Germany – Solo exhibition at Galerie Barsikow
1999 - Berlin, Germany – Solo exhibition at Galerie Barsikow
1999 - São Paulo SP, Brazil – Solo exhibition at Galeria Luisa Strina
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ, Brazil – Solo exhibition at Laura Marsiaj Arte Contemporânea
2003 - Brasília DF, Brazil – A Poesia da Gambiarra, at CCBB
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ, Brazil – A Poesia da Gambiarra, at CCBB
2003 - São Paulo SP, Brazil – Boa Romaria Faz Quem em Sua Casa Fica em Paz, at Galeria André Millan
2004 - Recife PE, Brazil – Solo exhibition at MAMAM
2004 - São Paulo SP, Brazil – A Poesia da Gambiarra, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake

Group Exhibitions

1980 - Curitiba PR - 37th Salão Paranaense - Petrobrás Distribuidora Award, Fundação Teatro Guaíra
1980 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 3rd National Salon of Visual Arts, MNBA
1980 - São Paulo SP - 12th Panorama of Contemporary Brazilian Art, MAM/SP
1980 - São Paulo SP - 1st Paulista Salon of Visual Arts, Fundação Bienal
1981 - Curitiba PR - 38th Salão Paranaense, Fundação Teatro Guaíra
1981 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 4th National Salon of Visual Arts, MAM/RJ
1981 - São Paulo SP - Painting and Drawing in Pará, Galeria Projecta
1982 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 5th National Salon of Visual Arts, MAM/RJ
1982 - São Paulo SP - 3rd Brazilian Art Salon, Fundação Mokiti Okada – Acquisition Award
1983 - Atami (Japan) - 6th Brazil-Japan Fine Arts Exhibition
1983 - Kyoto (Japan) - 6th Brazil-Japan Fine Arts Exhibition
1983 - Rio de Janeiro RJ (Japan) - 6th Brazil-Japan Fine Arts Exhibition, MNBA
1983 - São Paulo SP - 6th Brazil-Japan Fine Arts Exhibition, MASP
1983 - Tokyo (Japan) - 6th Brazil-Japan Fine Arts Exhibition
1984 - Fortaleza CE - 7th National Salon of Visual Arts – invited artist
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 7th National Salon of Visual Arts, MAM/RJ – Travel Award
1984 - São Paulo SP - Arte na Rua 2
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Velha Mania: Brazilian Drawing, EAV/Parque Lage
1985 - São Paulo SP - O Popular como Matriz, MAC/USP – invited artist
1985 - São Paulo SP - Trends in Artist Books in Brazil, CCSP
1986 - Fortaleza CE - Imagine: the Planet Greets the Comet, Arte Galeria
1986 - New Delhi (India) - 6th India Triennale
1986 - São Paulo SP - 4th Paulista Salon of Contemporary Art, Fundação Bienal – Clock Award
1987 - Belém PA - 16th Arte Pará Salon, Museu do Estado do Pará
1987 - São Paulo SP - 5th Paulista Salon of Contemporary Art, Pinacoteca do Estado
1988 - Leverkusen (Germany) - Brasil Já, Museum Morsbroich
1988 - São Paulo SP - 15 Years of Brazil-Japan Fine Arts Exhibition, Fundação Mokiti Okada M.O.A.
1988 - Stuttgart (Germany) - Brasil Já, Galerie Landesgirokasse
1989 - Amsterdam (Netherlands) - U-ABC, Stedelijk Museum
1989 - Hannover (Germany) - Brasil Já, Sprengel Museum
1989 - Havana (Cuba) - 3rd Havana Biennale
1989 - São Paulo SP - 20th São Paulo International Biennale, Fundação Bienal
1989 - São Paulo SP - 20th Panorama of Contemporary Brazilian Art, MAM/SP
1990 - Brasília DF - Brasília Award for Visual Arts, MAB/DF
1990 - Lisbon (Portugal) - U-ABC, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
1991 - Campo Grande MS - BR/80. Painting in Brazil in the 1980s, Itaugaleria
1991 - Stockholm (Sweden) - Viva Brasil Viva, Liljevalchs Konsthall
1992 - Curitiba PR - 10th Curitiba Printmaking Exhibition/America Show, Museu da Gravura
1992 - Kassel (Germany) - Projekt Stoffwechsel
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st On the Way to Niterói: João Sattamini Collection, Paço Imperial
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Arte Amazonas, MAM/RJ
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Contemporary Art, EAV/Parque Lage
1993 - São Paulo SP - 23rd Panorama of Contemporary Brazilian Art, MAM/SP
1993 - Venice (Italy) - 45th Venice Biennale
1994 - Juiz de Fora MG - América, UFJF
1994 - Salvador BA - 1st MAM-Bahia Salon of Visual Arts, MAM/BA
1994 - São Paulo SP - Brazil 20th Century Biennale, Fundação Bienal
1995 - Brasília DF - Brasília Collections, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Palácio do Itamaraty
1995 - São Paulo SP - Annual Program of Visual Arts Exhibitions, CCSP
1995 - São Paulo SP - Projeto Contato, Galeria Sesc Paulista
1996 - Niterói RJ - Brazilian Contemporary Art in the João Sattamini Collection, MAC/Niterói
1996 - Potsdam (Germany) - Counterpart: 12 Brazilian and German Artists, Kunstspeicher Potsdam
1996 - São Paulo SP - 15 Brazilian Artists, MAM/SP
1996 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Brazilian Art: Recent Donations/96, MAM/SP
1997 - Belém PA - 16th Arte Pará Salon, Museu do Estado do Pará
1997 - Belém PA - Arte Pará: Frontier, Museu de Arte do Belém
1997 - Goiânia GO - Braziliness: Collection of Brazilian Artists, Galeria de Arte Marina Potrich
1997 - Ouro Preto MG - Experiences and Perspectives: 12 Contemporary Views, Museu Casa dos Contos
1997 - Porto Alegre RS - Caixa Collection Exhibition, Conjunto Cultural da Caixa
1997 - Porto Alegre RS - Parallel Exhibition, Museu da Caixa Econômica Federal
1997 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 15 Brazilian Artists, MAM/RJ
1997 - São Paulo SP - Anthropophagic Appropriations, Itaú Cultural
1997 - São Paulo SP - Caixa Collection Exhibition, Conjunto Cultural da Caixa
1998 - Belo Horizonte MG - The Contemporary Urban Landscape, Itaú Cultural
1998 - Belo Horizonte MG - Emmanuel Nassar, Leda Catunda, Marcos Benjamim, Kolams Galeria de Arte
1998 - Campinas SP - The Contemporary Urban Landscape, Itaú Cultural
1998 - Cuenca (Ecuador) - 6th Cuenca Biennale
1998 - Curitiba PR - Caixa Collection Exhibition, Conjunto Cultural da Caixa
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Caixa Collection Exhibition, Conjunto Cultural da Caixa
1998 - Niterói RJ - Mirror of the Biennale, MAC/Niterói
1998 - Penápolis SP - The Contemporary Urban Landscape, Itaugaleria
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Art in the Collection of the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art: Recent Donations 1996
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Art in the Collection of the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art: Recent Donations 1996-1998, CCBB
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Caixa Collection Exhibition, Conjunto Cultural da Caixa
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 16th National Salon of Visual Arts, MAM/RJ
1998 - São Paulo SP - 24th São Paulo International Biennale, Fundação Bienal
1998 - São Paulo SP - The Contemporary Urban Landscape, MAM/SP
1998 - São Paulo SP - Frontiers, Itaú Cultural
1998 - São Paulo SP - Frontiers, Itaú Cultural
1999 - Belém PA - Revisiting Perspectives, Museu de Arte Sacra
1999 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Latin America: From the Avant-Garde to the End of the Millennium, Culturgest
1999 - Salvador BA - 60 Years of Brazilian Art, Espaço Cultural da Caixa Econômica Federal
2000 - Belo Horizonte MG - Ars Brasilis, Galeria de Arte do Minas Tênis Clube
2000 - Belo Horizonte MG - Investigations: Brazilian Printmaking – Are They Prints or Not?, Itaú Cultural
2000 - Belo Horizonte MG - Brazil in Popular Visual Culture, MAP
2000 - Belo Horizonte MG - Presente de Reis, Kolams Galeria de Arte
2000 - Berlin (Germany) - Brasilien in Barsikow, Galerie Barsikow
2000 - Brasília DF - Investigations: Brazilian Printmaking – Are They Prints or Not?, Itaú Cultural
2000 - Curitiba PR - 12th Curitiba Printmaking Exhibition: Marks of the Body, Folds of the Soul
2000 - Lisbon (Portugal) - 20th Century: Art from Brazil, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão
2000 - Recife PE - 44th Pernambuco Salon of Visual Arts, Observatório Cultural Malakoff
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition: Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha, Museu Histórico Nacional
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brasilidades, Centro Cultural Light
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition: Visual Arts, Fundação Bienal
2000 - São Paulo SP - Cá entre Nós, Paço das Artes
2001 - Belém PA - 20th Arte Pará Salon, Galeria da Residência
2001 - Belém PA - 20th Arte Pará Salon, Museu do Estado do Pará
2001 - Porto Alegre RS - Liba and Rubem Knijnik Collection: Contemporary Brazilian Art, MARGS
2001 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Image of Sound by Antônio Carlos Jobim, Paço Imperial
2001 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Blind Mirror: Selections from a Contemporary Collection, Paço Imperial
2001 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Spirit of Our Time, MAM/RJ
2001 - São Paulo SP - Blind Mirror: Selections from a Contemporary Collection, MAM/SP
2001 - São Paulo SP - The Spirit of Our Time, MAM/SP
2001 - São Paulo SP - The Trajectory of Light in Brazilian Art, Itaú Cultural
2002 - Brasília DF - Fragments to Your Magnet, Espaço Cultural Contemporâneo Venâncio
2002 - Curitiba PR - Works from Faxinal das Artes, Museu de Arte Contemporânea
2002 - Londrina PR - Are They Prints or Not?, Museu de Arte de Londrina
2002 - Niterói RJ - Works on Paper, MAC/Niterói
2002 - Niterói RJ - Dialogue, Antagonism, and Replication in the Sattamini Collection, MAC/Niterói
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Image of Sound of Brazilian Rock and Pop, Paço Imperial
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Art in the Field, Centro Cultural da Justiça Federal
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Paths of the Contemporary 1952-2002, Paço Imperial
2002 - São Paulo SP - Map of the Now: Recent Brazilian Art in the João Sattamini Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Niterói, Instituto Tomie Ohtake
2002 - São Paulo SP - Paralela
2002 - São Paulo SP - Pop Brazil: Popular Art and the Popular in Art, CCBB
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Flags of Brazil, Museu da República
2003 - São Paulo SP - My Friends, Espaço MAM/Villa-Lobos
2003 - São Paulo SP - A Difficult Moment of Balance, Espaço MAM/Villa-Lobos
2004 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Everything is Brazil, Paço Imperial
2004 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Art in the Municipal Collection, CCSP
2004 - São Paulo SP - Everything is Brazil, Itaú Cultural