In parallel with the inauguration of SP-Arte, Galeria Raquel Arnaud is presenting A Matéria da Cor (‘The Matter of Color’), a group show where color plays the leading role. According to Franck Marlot, curator of the exhibition, in the history of painting, color has always been intimately associated with form, as countless artistic movements have accorded priority to one or the other. The exhibition, which opens to the public on April 3 during the Gallery Night event, invites the public to look upon thirteen artists who have made color their primary focus of inquiry.

Names of historic stature selected by Marlot comprise the pillars of the exhibition. Such is the case for Josef Albers, present at this show with two large silk screens, Homenagem ao Quadrado (‘Homage to the Square’). This iconic series on how color can become an artistic project in and of itself puts its stamp on experiments in chromatic interactions, their transparencies and interdependencies, as developed by Albers over the course of his life. Yves Klein, with his patented IKB blue, striking and intense, also falls within this group. According to the curator, in A Terra Azul (‘The Blue Earth’), a manifesto created by the artist in 1957, “color covers the terrestrial globe like a Monochrome print, taking away its function as an object.” Another French artist completes this group, Sonia Delaunay, who, through Orphism, a dissident movement that branched off from Cubism, proposed a new luminous vernacular based on visual experiences developed from the observation of sunlight.

Taking part in the show from among the gallery’s featured artists are Arthur Luiz Piza, with a set of his unmistakable pieces of colored metal; Carlos Cruz-Diez, with Transcromia (‘Transchromie’) (1981), a historic installation that provokes the senses offering a total immersion in color; Carlos Nunes, who has painted a wall of the gallery with egg yolk, an approach comprising part of a series of color samples made from everyday food products; Carlos Fajardo, whose sculpture, Neutro (‘Neutral’) (1966), explores form and color through the diversity of its materials; Waltercio Caldas, an artist who, as Malet notes, “takes pleasure in seducing the viewer’s gaze with color as the first sensory manifestation of the work”; and Wolfram Ullrich, with one of his 3-dimensional reliefs, wall sculptures in the most recent phase – objects of jagged steel covered with vivid and intense colors. Works by Herbert Hamak, Raúl Diaz Reyes, Renato Bezerra de Mello and Vincent Beaurin complete the exhibition.