At the Vermelho Gallery while on the beat in Sao Paulo

On a recent visit to Sao Paulo, we spent a day visiting art galleries around the city ahead of Paul Richardson’s visit to Brazil. The contemporary art scene certainly lived up to everything we had hoped for and hit all the right notes: undiscovered, exciting and original.

In the morning, our art historian guide took us to Vila Madalena to see a wonderful array of São Paulo Street Art. We then moved onto the Vermelho Gallery, where renowned living artist and set designer, Nelson Leirner’s temporary exhibition of canonic works was on display.

Combining artists from history and today, Leirner imparts to them his own iconoclastic interpretations.

We were allowed to wonder freely around the Gallery while taking these photographs with our new Nikon and without any security guards or prying eyes of suspicion interrupting us.

In April, Christie’s published our second in a series of features of Art in South America. Here’s Paul’s take on this oasis of Modern Art:

Vermelho Higienópolis is an upper-middle-class area noted for its cult modernist buildings. Vermelho (‘Red’) opened here in 2002 when Brazil was just getting into its stride, with a newly flourishing economy and an optimistic national mood. The gallery, renovated by Pritzker prizewinner Paulo Mendes da Rocha with José Armenio de Brito, forms an urban oasis among the newly built housing blocks. Vermelho was born as a photography gallery then swivelled its focus onto young Latin American art. Its roster of artists features a Mexican, a Portuguese and three Argentinians; the rest are Brazilian. The biggest name is probably André Komatsu, who represented Brazil at the Venice Biennale last year. But Vermelho’s main focus is the new generation.

Read more about Paul Richardson’s day on the Sampa Beat on our Press Page

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