Leda Catunda

Leda Catunda (São Paulo, SP, 1961)

Leda Catunda is a painter and printmaker. She studied Fine Arts at the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation (FAAP) in São Paulo between 1980 and 1984, where her teachers included Regina Silveira (1939), Julio Plaza (1938-2003), Nelson Leirner (1932), and Walter Zanini (1925). In 1986, she began her career as a professor at FAAP and also in her studio, where she taught until the mid-1990s. Since the late 1980s, she has taught workshops and open courses at various cultural institutions in Brazil, as well as occasionally abroad.

In 1990, she received the Brasília/Federal District Fine Arts Award in the acquisition category. In 2003, she obtained her doctorate in Arts with the dissertation "Poetics of Softness: Paintings and Poetic Objects" from the School of Communications and Arts of the University of São Paulo (ECA/USP), under the supervision of Julio Plaza. She also had a significant role as a teacher, teaching painting and drawing in the Fine Arts program at the Santa Marcelina College (FASM) in São Paulo, between 1998 and 2005. In 1998, the book "Leda Catunda," written by Tadeu Chiarelli, was published by Cosac & Naify.

Critical Commentary

Leda Catunda studied fine arts at the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation (FAAP) in São Paulo from 1980 to 1984. There, she attended classes with Nelson Leirner (1932), Regina Silveira (1939), Julio Plaza (1938-2003), and Walter Zanini (1925). Her professors introduced her to discussions on conceptual art, the status of the work, its commodification, and the use of technological means of production. At the same time, she became interested in neo-expressionist painting produced in Europe and the United States by artists such as Julian Schnabel (1951), Sandro Chia (1946), and Francesco Clemente (1952). According to art critic Tadeu Chiarelli, in her early works, Leda addressed critical issues in the conceptual debate, such as the visual interests of the neo-expressionists. In 1982, she created lithographs in which she appropriated television images, a practice familiar to the generation of her teachers. At the same time, she painted realistic paintings.

The following year, painting became central to her work. She worked on printed fabrics, covering the figures with color. She continued to work on printed surfaces. Instead of covering the images, her paintings highlighted them, as in Jaguar (1984). She created figurations by grouping unusual objects and supports. She gathered cut-out fabrics, sewed them together, and superimposed unusual elements onto the painting. The works hover between painting and object. The artist also dealt with figurative motifs present in popular culture.

Gradually, the interest in her work shifted from figuration to structural issues. Chiarelli states that "in 1989 (...) Leda attempted to reshape her production, paying more attention to its visual and artistic aspects, vehemently seeking to break free from the anecdotal and strongly narrative character that characterized her previous work."2 She did not abandon the figure; however, she focused on formal relationships and the structuring of the canvas through the use of unconventional materials, such as socks and T-shirts.

In the 1990s, she deepened her interest in the specificity of the materials with which she worked. She created pictorial surfaces by layering fabrics and other flat, colored media. She worked with diverse elements, such as tulle, velvet, plastic, quilting, canvas, leather, and Formica. Her way of grouping them is sometimes abstract. In other works, such as the reliefs, the composition retains a familiarity with recurring images. They begin with simple motifs, such as the drawing of the moon, insects, droplets, and body parts. In these works, made in the second half of the 1990s, he approaches the sculptures of Claes Oldenburg (1929).

Reviews

"(...) Leda's originality lies in her materials, her posture, and her work. She paints on completely unconventional supports, often using pre-existing images. (...) instead of canvases, there is a beach hut, the leather of dismantled armchairs, bath towels, comforters, lace, false wigs, and even the frills of blender covers, transformed into the roofs of little houses, where lights are turned on. One of the most provocative works is the wigs. A composition in black, dramatic, somewhat morbid. It results from a trip the artist took to Japan and reproduces—with absolute freedom—the claustrophobic atmosphere of the crowds on the Tokyo subway. Leda's figuration, who confesses she doesn't know how to draw a person, is admittedly somewhat clumsy, except when she takes the opportunity to color in already printed drawings. This painting should be read through the eyes of 1987, understanding the art as a vigorous and personal idea, whose strength counts more than the execution and the 'kitchen' of technique. (...)".
Olívio Tavares de Araújo
LOUZADA, Júlio. Visual Arts Brazil 1985: its market, its auctions. Foreword Pietro Maria Bardi; Mino Carta. São Paulo: J. Louzada, 1984. p. 240.

"At a time when painting has been scrutinized, analyzed, and worked on in its essence, seemingly exhausted in modernity, as in projects like Robert Ryman's, Leda Catunda neither elides nor seeks to skirt around the reification of painting. Catunda operates her irony. Supports and surface, paint (drops and brushstrokes), color—everything is collapsing. Painting rediscovers its meaning every time an artist reinvents a way of painting. In her passion for painting, Catunda escapes, in her relationship with the history of painting, certain epidemics, such as the epidemic of metaphors and the epidemic of quotations. (...)
In short, her painting is paradoxical: it pursues reality without giving up the sensual surface (...). She does not consider having to choose between feeling and thought (...). Her painting reveals the basis of the inhuman nature in which man has settled. Leda Catunda's painting settles in that restless and problematic territory reconciliation between senses and reason".
Paulo Herkenhoff
CATUNDA, LEDA. Leda Catunda. Text by Paulo Herkenhoff; translation by Esther Stearns d'Utra e Silva. São Paulo: Galeria Camargo Vilaça, 1996.

"Almost twenty years after her first major appearance on the São Paulo and Brazilian art scene, Leda Catunda is now an artist who has mastered, as never before, the art she learned from her professors at FAAP and her experience as one of the most prominent artists of the past decade, combining a strong element of unease with the possibilities of art today. 
Rather than settling for the initial discoveries of her career, she dared to reshape the evolution of her work toward an extremely particular deepening of painting, both as an institution and as a sensitive modality of understanding the world. To this end, she utilized the introduction of procedures traditionally foreign to it into this field, a fact that determined her singularity within the visual arts in Brazil. 
Still in the midst of expanding and solidifying her poetics, rescued with great difficulty from the abrupt shifts and detours that marked her career at the end of the last decade and the beginning of this one, the artist Leda Catunda, however, already demonstrates that he has reached a definitive direction for his work, emphasizing and expanding the limits of painting as an instrument of inquiry into form and the perception of the world."
Tadeu Chiarelli
CHIARELLI, Tadeu. Problematizing the nature of painting. In: LEDA Catunda. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 1998. p. 29.

Solo Exhibitions

1985 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - Solo exhibition at Thomas Cohn Contemporary Art
1986 - Porto Alegre, RS - Leda Catunda: research space, at Margs
1987 - São Paulo, SP - Solo exhibition at Luisa Strina Gallery
1988 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - Solo exhibition at Thomas Cohn Contemporary Art
1990 - Americana, SP - Solo exhibition at MAC/Americana
1990 - Recife, PE - Solo exhibition at Espaço Pasárgada
1990 - São Paulo, SP - Solo exhibition at São Paulo Art Gallery
1992 - Lisbon, Portugal - Solo exhibition at Módulo Centro Difusor de Arte
1992 - São Paulo, SP - Solo exhibition at São Paulo Art Gallery
1992 - São Paulo, SP - Solo exhibition at CCSP
1993 - Porto (Portugal) - Solo show, at the Art Diffusion Center Module
1994 - São José dos Campos SP - Solo show, at the Cassiano Ricardo Cultural Foundation
1996 - São Paulo SP - Solo show, at the Camargo Vilaça Gallery
1997 - Goiânia GO - Solo show, at the Marina Potrich Art Gallery
1997 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo show, at the Paço Imperial
1998 - Curitiba PR - Solo show, at the Casa da Imagem Gallery
1998 - São Paulo SP - Solo show, at the Camargo Vilaça Gallery
1999 - São Paulo SP - Solo show, at the Paço das Artes
2000 - Belo Horizonte MG - Solo show, at the Kalil and Lauar Art Gallery
2000 - Goiânia GO - Solo show, at the Marina Potrich Art Gallery
2000 - Vila Velha ES - Leda Catunda: soft paintings, at the Vale do Rio Doce Museum
2002 - São Paulo SP - Portrait, at the Fortes Vilaça Gallery
2003 - São Paulo SP - Solo exhibition, at the CCSP
2003 - São Paulo SP - Poetics of Softness: paintings and objects, at the Maria Antonia University Center
2004 - São Paulo SP - Solo exhibition, at the Fortes Vilaça Gallery

Group Exhibitions

1981 - Santos SP - 9th Young Art Salon
1982 - São Paulo SP - 1st National Festival of Women in the Arts, at MAC/USP
1983 - São Paulo SP - 17th São Paulo International Biennial, at Fundação Bienal
1983 - São Paulo SP - Arte na Rua 1
1983 - São Paulo SP - Painting as a Medium, at MAC/USP
1984 - Fortaleza CE - 7th National Salon of Visual Arts
1984 - Havana (Cuba) - 1st Havana Biennial, at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
1984 - Madrid (Spain) - ARCO/84
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - How Are You, Geração 80?, at EAV/Parque Lage
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 7th National Salon of Visual Arts, at MAM/RJ
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Stand 320: Young Brazilian Painting, at Thomas Cohn Arte Contemporânea
1984 - São Paulo SP - Leda Catunda, Sérgio Romagnolo, Ciro Cozzolino and Leonilson, at Galeria Luisa Strina
1985 - Brasília DF - Braziliness and Independence, at Teatro Nacional Cláudio Santoro
1985 - São Paulo SP - 18th São Paulo International Biennial, at Fundação Bienal
1985 - São Paulo SP - Trends in Artist’s Books in Brazil, at CCSP
1985 - Tokyo (Japan) - Today's Art of Brazil, at Hara Museum of Contemporary Art
1986 - Fortaleza CE - Imagine: The Planet Salutes the Comet, at Arte Galeria
1986 - Guadalajara (Mexico) - Paintings: Escrete Volador
1986 - New York (United States) - Brazilian Painting, at Snug Harbor Cultural Center
1986 - Porto Alegre RS - Rubem Knijnik Collection: Brazilian Art 60s/70s/80s, at MARGS
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st Christian Dior Contemporary Art Exhibition: Painting, at Paço Imperial
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Transvanguardia and National Cultures, at MAM/RJ
1987 - Brasília DF - Painting Outside the Frame: 10 Contemporary Artists, at Espaço Capital Arte Contemporânea
1987 - Paris (France) - Modernity: Brazilian Art of the 20th Century, at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
1987 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - To the Collector: Homage to Gilberto Chateaubriand, at MAM/RJ
1987 - São Paulo SP - The Fabric of Taste: Another Look at Everyday Life, at Fundação Bienal
1987 - São Paulo SP - Second Generation Images, at MAC/USP
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 88 x 68: A Balance of the Years
1988 - São Paulo SP - Eduardo Brandão Private Collection, at Galeria Casa Triângulo
1988 - São Paulo SP - MAC 25 Years: Recent Acquisitions and Donations, at MAC/USP
1988 - São Paulo SP - Modernity: Brazilian Art of the 20th Century, at MAM/SP
1989 - Amsterdam (Netherlands) - U-ABC, at Stedelijk Museum
1989 - Piracicaba SP - 22nd Contemporary Art Salon of Piracicaba
1989 - Porto Alegre RS - Hybrid Art, at Espaço Cultural BFB
1989 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Hybrid Art, at Funarte, Center for the Arts
1989 - São Paulo SP - 20th Panorama of Brazilian Contemporary Art, at MAM/SP
1989 - São Paulo SP - São Paulo Gallery Collection, at Galeria de Arte São Paulo
1989 - São Paulo SP - Hybrid Art, at MAM/SP
1989 - São Paulo SP - Recent Perspectives, at CCSP
1990 - Brasília DF - Brasília Visual Arts Award, at MAB/DF – Acquisition Prize
1990 - Lisbon (Portugal) - U-ABC, at Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão
1990 - Piracicaba SP - 22nd Contemporary Art Salon of Piracicaba
1991 - Caracas (Venezuela) - Brazil: The New Generation, at Fundación Museo de Bellas Artes
1991 - São Paulo SP - BR/80. Brazilian Painting of the 1980s, at Itaugaleria
1991 - São Paulo SP - Visual Arts Exhibition Program, at CCSP
1992 - Paris (France) - Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, at Centre Georges Pompidou
1992 - Seville (Spain) - Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, at Estación Plaza de Armas
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st A Caminho de Niterói: João Sattamini Collection, at Paço Imperial
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Contemporary Art, at EAV/Parque Lage
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Coca-Cola 50 Years with Art, at MAM/RJ
1992 - São Paulo SP - Dominant White, at Galeria de Arte São Paulo
1992 - São Paulo SP - Coca-Cola 50 Years with Art, at MAM/SP
1992 - São Paulo SP - Annual Exhibition Program of Visual Arts 1991, at Fundação Bienal
1992 - São Paulo SP - A Look at Figurative Art, at Galeria Casa Triângulo
1993 - Cologne (Germany) - Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, at Kunsthalle Cologne
1993 - Niterói RJ - 2nd A Caminho de Niterói: João Sattamini Collection, at MAC/Niterói
1993 - New York (United States) - Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, at MoMA
1993 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Art in the World, a Trajectory: 24 Brazilian Artists, at Dan Galeria
1993 - São Paulo SP - MASP at Morumbi Shopping, at Shopping Morumbi
1993 - Washington (United States) - Ultramodern: The Art of Contemporary Brazil, at The National Museum of Women in the Arts
1994 - São Paulo SP - 22nd São Paulo International Biennial, at Fundação Bienal
1994 - São Paulo SP - Brazil Biennial 20th Century, at Fundação Bienal
1994 - São Paulo SP - Landscapes
1995 - Denver (United States) - Latin American Women Artists 1915–1995, at Denver Art Museum
1995 - Milwaukee (United States) - Latin American Women Artists 1915–1995, at Milwaukee Art Center
1995 - Phoenix (United States) - Latin American Women Artists 1915–1995, at Phoenix Art Museum
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Perverse Childhood: Fables on Memory and Time, at MAM/RJ
1995 - Salvador BA - Perverse Childhood: Fables on Memory and Time, at MAM/BA
1995 - São Paulo SP - The 1980s: Stage of Diversity, at Galeria de Arte do Sesi
1995 - São Paulo SP - 1st United Artists, at Casa das Rosas
1996 - Leverkusen (Germany) - Contemporary Brazilian Art, at Bayer AG – Foyer Hochhaus W1
1996 - Dormagen (Germany) - Contemporary Brazilian Art, at Bayer AG – Feierabendhaus
1996 - Miami (United States) - Latin American Women Artists 1915–1995, at Center for the Fine Arts Miami Art Museum of Dade
1996 - Potsdam (Germany) - Counterpart, at Kunstspeicher
1996 - São Paulo SP - 15 Brazilian Artists, at MAM/SP
1996 - São Paulo SP - 1st Off Biennial, at MuBE
1996 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1996 - São Paulo SP - Women Artists in the MAC Collection, at MAC/USP
1996 - Washington (United States) - Latin American Women Artists 1915–1995, at National Museum of Women in the Arts
1997 - Curitiba PR - Contemporary Printmaking, at Museu Metropolitano de Arte de Curitiba
1997 - Goiânia GO - Braziliness: Collection of Brazilian Artists, at Galeria de Arte Marina Potrich
1997 - Sydney (Australia) - Material Immaterial, at Art Gallery of New South Wales
1997 - Ouro Preto MG - Experiences and Perspectives: 12 Contemporary Visions, at Museu Casa dos Contos
1997 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 15 Brazilian Artists, at MAM/RJ
1997 - São Paulo SP - 1st Contemporary Heritage, at MAC/USP
1998 - Belo Horizonte MG - Emmanuel Nassar, Leda Catunda, Marcos Benjamim, at Kolams Galeria de Arte
1998 - Berlin (Germany) - The Brazilian Gaze, at Haus der Kulturen der Welt
1998 - Campinas SP - Measures of the Self, at Itaú Cultural
1998 - Goiânia GO - The 1980s, at Galeria de Arte Marina Potrich
1998 - Niterói RJ - Mirror of the Biennial, at MAC/Niterói
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Art in the MAM/SP Collection: Recent Donations 1996–1998, at CCBB
1998 - São Paulo SP - São Paulo Gallery Collection, at Galeria de Arte São Paulo
1998 - São Paulo SP - Elective Affinities I: The Collector's Eye, at Casa das Rosas
1998 - São Paulo SP - Measures of the Self, at MAM/SP
1998 - São Paulo SP - The Modern and the Contemporary in Brazilian Art: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection – MAM/RJ, at MASP
1999 - Piracicaba SP - 31st Contemporary Art Salon of Piracicaba, at Engenho Central
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Image of Sound by Chico Buarque, at Paço Imperial
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Everyday/Art: The Object – 60s/90s, at MAM/RJ
1999 - São Paulo SP - Everyday/Art: Consumption, at Itaú Cultural
1999 - São Paulo SP - Everyday/Art: The Object – 60s/90s, at Itaú Cultural
1999 - São Paulo SP - Everyday/Art: The Object – 90s, at Itaú Cultural
1999 - São Paulo SP - Brazil in the Century of Art, at Galeria de Arte do Sesi
2000 - Curitiba PR - 12th Curitiba Printmaking Exhibition: Marks of the Body, Folds of the Soul
2000 - Lisbon (Portugal) - 20th Century: Art from Brazil, at Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão
2000 - Petrópolis RJ - The Century of Women: Selected Artists, at Casa de Petrópolis. Instituto de Cultura
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil + 500: Exhibition of Rediscovery, at Fundação Bienal
2000 - São Paulo SP - Cow Parade
2001 - Porto Alegre RS - 3rd Mercosur Visual Arts Biennial
2001 - Porto Alegre RS - Liba and Rubem Knijnik Collection: Contemporary Brazilian Art, at MARGS
2001 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Blind Mirror: Selections from a Contemporary Collection, at Paço Imperial
2001 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Spirit of Our Time, at MAM/RJ
2001 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Culture 1, at Casa das Rosas
2001 - São Paulo SP - Blind Mirror: Selections from a Contemporary Collection, at MAM/SP
2001 - São Paulo SP - The Spirit of Our Time, at MAM/SP
2001 - São Paulo SP - The Trajectory of Light in Brazilian Art, at Itaú Cultural
2002 - Brasília DF - Fragments to Your Magnet, at Espaço Cultural Contemporâneo Venâncio
2002 - Niterói RJ - Dialogue, Antagonism and Replication in the Sattamini Collection, at MAC/Niterói
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Art in the Field, at Centro Cultural da Justiça Federal
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Paths of the Contemporary 1952–2002, at Paço Imperial
2002 - São Paulo SP - 28 (+) Painting, at Espaço Virgílio
2002 - São Paulo SP - Metrópolis Collection of Contemporary Art, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2002 - São Paulo SP - Inflatables, at Sesc Belenzinho
2002 - São Paulo SP - Map of the Now: Recent Brazilian Art in the João Sattamini Collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Niterói, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake
2002 - São Paulo SP - Open Opera: Celebration, at Casa das Rosas
2002 - São Paulo SP - Parallel, at Galpão Avenida Matarazzo, 530
2002 - São Paulo SP - Rotativa Phase 2, at Galeria Fortes Vilaça
2003 - São Paulo SP - 2080, at MAM/SP
2003 - São Paulo SP - Recent Acquisitions 2003 by the Contemporary Nucleus of MAM, at MAM/SP
2003 - São Paulo SP - MAC USP 40 Years: Contemporary Interfaces, at MAC/USP
2003 - São Paulo SP - Marcantonio Vilaça – Contemporary Passport, at MAC/USP
2003 - São Paulo SP - My Friends, at MAM/SP
2004 - Campinas SP - Metrópolis Collection of Contemporary Art, at Espaço Cultural CPFL
2004 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Where Are You, Geração 80?, at CCBB
2004 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Art in the Municipal Collection, at CCSP
2004 - São Paulo SP - Summer Bazaar, at Galeria Fortes Vilaça
2004 - São Paulo SP - Still Life / Natureza Morta, at Galeria de Arte do Sesi
2005 - São Paulo SP - Art in Metropolis, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake