Artist Emanoel Araujo Speaks to Hans Ulrich Obrist About the Unthinkable Future of Brazil

The Aspen Art Museum's annual ArtCrush celebration returns this year, bringing together a global community of art-lovers. With events running from August 4 to 6, ArtCrush highlights the leaders of the contemporary art scene, while supporting the museum's artistic and educational efforts. Culminating with a gala and live auction, co-chaired by Amy Phelan and Jamie Tisch, art collectors and patrons of the museum will flock to Aspen to fête the institution. In addition, an online auction with over 50 works will be held from today, July 26, to August 6. 

With such talented artists participating, L'OFFICIEL asked Serpentine Gallery Artistic Director and Hans Ulrich Obrist, who is close to the Aspen Art Museum, to share a highlight from the auction. The curator and critic singled out Brazilian artist Emanoel Araujo, who he says is "an artist who deserves more visibility."

Emanoel Araujo was born in Santo Amaro da Purificação, a municipality in the state of Bahia, Brazil, in 1940. He moved to Salvador and studied at Escola de Belas Arts of the Federal University of Bahia. In 1987, he was invited as a distinguished professor at City College (City University of New York), where he taught graphic arts and sculpture.

Throughout his artistic career, he has worked as a sculptor, designer, costume illustrator, engraver, set designer, painter, curator, and museologist. His role as curator of important shows linked to national and international exhibitions, such as those of the sculptors Auguste Rodin, Aristide Maillol, Camille Claudel, Antoine Bourdelle, and Niki de Saint Phalle, as well as various exhibitions on Afro-Brazilian image and culture.

In 1972, he was awarded the gold medal in the third Graphic Biennial of Florence, Italy. In 1973, The São Paulo Association of Art Critics (APCA) awarded the artist in the category Best Recorder, and again in 1983 in the Best Sculptor category. He was also director of the Bahia Museum of Art (1981-1983) and director of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (1992-2002), which he restructured into an internationally recognized institution and one of the most important Brazilian museums. In 2004, Araujo founded the Museu Afro Brasil in São Paulo, with works from a collection donated by the Secretariat of Culture of the State of São Paulo. In 2007, he received a tribute to his 45-year career at Instituto Tomie Ohtake, with the exhibition Autobiografia do Gesto.

Araujo's work that is featured in the ArtCrush auction is a 1972 woodcut, from an important period of evolution in the artist's career as he moved from 2-D to 3-D media. In 2017, Obrist had the opportunity to speak with Araujo for the book Hans Ulrich Obrist: Entrevistas Brasileiras, published by Cobogó, about this transition, as well as his pioneering work in Brazil and what he hopes to see in the future. Here is their conversation:

Hans Ulrich Obrist: When you started, who were your influences?

Emanoel Araujo: I think my first teachers were Eufrásio Vargas and the artist Henrique Oswald. Several other artists made many impressions on me. As I learned, I admired artists that passed by in Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo.

HUO: We heard from Paulo Herkenhoff that you share genealogy with the artist Rubem Valentim.

EA: We are artists from the same family, he was from Bahia like me, and his work is developed through symbols created by the African-based religion of Bahia. I go in another direction, with a geometric, non-figurative language that expresses itself through rhythms and tensions. I always wanted to associate these elements with Paleo-African art, in the sense of its dogmas of stacking and repeating shapes, such as totem poles.

HUO: And the beginning of your career was in the 1960s, right?

EA: In 1963, I started to exhibit, first in Rio de Janeiro as a student artist, and in 1965 came my professional exhibitions in São Paulo and in Rio. That's how my professional life began. We also have to talk of the engravings and of my moving into sculpture. In 1976, I took my sculptures for the Nigeria Festival of Black Arts and Culture. I was accompanied by the art critic of Jornal do Brasil Roberto Pontual, and seeing all that touched me a lot. Africa came to me with another paradigm, and I tried to seek an identity in everything I saw. I saw many things, including the sculptures by Susanne Wenger, who lived in Oshogbo; she created monumental terracotta sculptures in honor of Oshun.

HUO: How did this trip to Nigeria lead you to abstraction?

EA: I was already abstract. I used geometric reliefs, in fact, these works were for the Venice Biennale, but that year there was an international boycott to the Biennale and I could not participate. There was an artist that impressed me a lot, however the Africans sometimes expressed themselves geometrically, sometimes figuratively—a very typical African union, and they were also totemic. The Nigerian Yoruba are an extraordinary, creative people, especially in bronzes cast in lost wax.

HUO: And these works in Zurich? They are absolutely incredible.

EA: I work a lot with the issue of space, whether in monumental or public works, reliefs in painted wood are constructions with negative and positive spaces, a search for light and these contrasts, often this geometry could be a new idea of concretism. There was an exhibition of my house in Zurich, Switzerland, at the Barengasse Museum, curated by writer and philologist Hugo Loetscher, who featured my collection of Afro-Brazilian works, which today is at the Afro Brasil Museum, in São Paulo.

HUO: After the epiphany in Nigeria, what work came? You started making public sculptures in open spaces?

EA: I started public works long before I went to Africa. They even started in Salvador, in an attempt to integrate art and architecture—they were reliefs in concrete, cement, and marble. At that time I worked with architects—these works still exist in the lobby of the city ​​buildings. Soon after came the carbon steel sculptures and stainless steel; these are also still there in Salvador.

HUO: And here we are at your house which seems to be a very special kind of Gesamtkunstwerk ("total artwork"). Tell us about the history and genesis of this house.

EA: This is a 1920s house made by Italian sculptor Joseph Cucci. She enchanted me with the artist's sculptures and paintings.

HUO: The house is full of things, objects…are you a collector?

EA: More than a collector, I am a person with many interests. I like to have objects around me, things from many origins—sometimes when I see an object, it calls me, or I think of a curatorship in which it would be part of the proposal. That's how the book and the exhibition The Mão Afro Brasileira, in 1988, came to fruition.

HUO: Which brings us to the Museu Afro Brazil. There are very interesting museums founded by artists, often the most fascinating museums.

EA: I made and worked in four museums in different ways. The Museu de Arte da Bahia, in Salvador, is an eclectic museum, a very common type in Brazil, which keeps objects from old families, such as Chinese dishes, furniture from different centuries and schools, academic paintings from regional artists, silverware, and jewelry. I looked for a building that could house all that collection, squeezed it into an old house, and gave it a new concept—that of a design museum. The Pinacoteca de São Paulo was in poor condition, especially the renovated building by São Paulo engineer Ramos de Azevedo, which housed the Liceu de Arte and Crafts in the 19th century that remained unfinished. Its collection was composed of academic art and modern art in style.

Faced with the abandonment of the building, I called the architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha to design a project for that framework, and we tried to restore a good part of the collection and fill in the gaps of paintings and sculptures. I was there for almost 10 years to consolidate the project, which also included Jardim da Luz, where I created a sculpture park for Brazilian artists. I also worked on the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende project in Chile, adapting the new space that would house the collection made by art critic Mário Pedrosa, who, as president of the International Association of Art Critics, won magnificent donations around the world for the creation of the museum.

As for the Museu Afro Brazil, it was born in 2004 at the Manoel Pavilion da Nóbrega, in Ibirapuera Park. It is Oscar Niemayer's project built for the celebrations of the fourth centenary of the city of São Paulo, and it housed the second International Biennial, which is considered the most important exhibition of all time, in which Picasso's "Guernica" was exposed. So the museum was proposed by former mayor Marta Suplicy, who knew about my collection of art focused on this subject.

HUO: Does Museu Afro Brazil have a manifesto?

EA: Yes, the manifesto is our history of a museum in perspective, which tells the story of Brazilian life from another point of view, from the side of self-esteem, through the memory, history, and art of those who built this country—a story that starts to be told from the point of view of the oppressed, of Afro-descendants who were a fundamental part in the construction of the national identity. A manifesto that shows the aspects of a mestiza society, that pays homage to Black people, that brings together the fundamental aspects of a people in spite of slavery, and that includes painters, sculptors, journalists, writers, poets, doctors, psychiatrists, teachers, editors, athletes, revolutionaries, and people who have overcome their adversity.

HUO: Returning to your work as an artist, I would like to ask you about your woodcuts. In the '70s, you started with this culture in Africa, which is abstract—but much earlier, in the '60s, you made some beautiful woodcuts. Where did this inspiration behind that come from?

EA: I started out as a graphic artist—woodcuts had a great importance in Brazil, with them I had the most important exhibitions, not only in Brazil, but in Japan, China, and Italy. I went through many phases, from figuration to geometric abstraction, and engravings, with the ribbons that took the work from the plane to space, they were the transition from engraving to sculpture. It was also the moment of discovery of the work on paper, where great names such as Maria Bonomi appeared, and Fayga Ostrower, Ana Leticia, Rossini Peres, Renina Katz and my mentor Henrique Oswald, among other artists. It was also the time of the studio of engraving from the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro.

HUO: Did you make posters? Were you also a graphic designer?

EA: It was natural for an artist to turn his eyes to graphic design, posters, book construction, etc. In my artistic career, it was worth everything to survive—I did scenography and costumes for the theater, too. In between the '60s and '70s, I made many posters for theatre, cinema, and tourism.

HUO: Then something interesting happened. At some point, you translate these woodcuts into abstract sculptures, in a way. Here, it's like a hostility to 2-D, 3-D, they're no longer figurative— they are abstract. Can you tell why it seems that in these works, the abstract sculptures and woodcuts come together?

EA: Of course, one thing was born from another when the prints were the search for space and no longer the natural dimensions of the wood, but the search for the relief determined the time to change support, and from there came the reliefs in wood and concrete, with panels and murals executed as the aid of the engraving matrix, to print above all on concrete. I think that change was a natural path.

HUO: What advice you would give to a young artist?

EA: This advice is very complicated—you have to work a lot and with a lot of resilience and determination. In my time as a young artist there were means to a smoother start, and I'm not apologizing for the past [laughs], but there were alternative spaces, there were the Art Salons, there were criticisms in the newspapers—now everything becomes perhaps more difficult, having talent and keeping with contemporaneity.

HUO: Last question, do you have a dream?

EA: A dream itself, no. I would like everything I've done to continue. That people who suffer from inequality and racism find a path of survival, that exclusion is fought by all, that education is an opportunity for all, and that social and university quotas will be a way of improvement and awareness of those who govern Brazil.

HUO: Before we leave, I wanted to ask you to write something by hand, because handwriting is disappearing. And I'll post it on Instagram.

EA: [Emanoel writes and reads aloud] An artist's life is an ongoing struggle.