Adriana Varejão: Modernisms

The body of work presented in the exhibition is conceived in direct dialogue with the artist’s participation in the Brazilian Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

While the tile paintings presented in the pavilion draw inspiration from Baroque and religious tilework of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the paintings in Modernisms shift the investigation towards Brazil’s modern period. They represent a temporal leap: from colonial tilework to modernist tiles, and from a tradition inherited from Portugal to a visual language that Brazil reinvented and made its own.

For more than three decades, Varejão’s research has primarily focused on the Portuguese tiles that arrived in Brazil during the colonial period. These images constitute a vast iconographic archive that has nourished much of the artist’s production. In recent years, however, Varejão’s attention has turned towards a more recent history: the presence of tilework in modern Brazilian architecture.

More than a historical survey, this exhibition proposes an act of recovery. It seeks to bring to light a body of work that shaped the Brazilian urban imagination and that, despite its extraordinary formal richness, often remains invisible. By revisiting these patterns, the artist aims to recognise tilework as a fundamental part of Brazil’s visual culture and as a living link between the past and the present.