Press

 

To understand the Amazon Series, you have to know a little about my life, says the Brazilian-Colombian plastic artist María Thereza Negreiros. His monumental works emerge from the center of the earth and speak the language of the Latin American artist. Letra Urbana spoke with her on the occasion of the opening of the Offerings exhibition at FIU's Frost Museum.

Universidad del Valle’s newspaper, La Palabra, in a special issue dedicated to the fine arts, chronicles Maria Thereza Negreiros’ artistic path in its feature article.

 

Maria Thereza Negreiros’ work brings out the best in abstract expressionism. Her global vision and paintings of burning jungles, rivers and lakes uniquely question these natural catastrophes and flaws in the human being.

 

You have to live the Amazon forest. You have to suffer the sun at noon, feeling that it is going to split you in half, experience nature, suddenly solemn and still and suddenly aggressive, this changing nature so similar to that of the human being. I would encourage all intellectuals, especially those confined to the comforts of urban life, to visit.

 

Interview with Maritza Uribe de Urdinola.
Director, Museo de Arte Moderno La Tertulia, Cali. 1980

Even though many times I disagree with the results produced by the artists, this does not always means I am rejecting or denying their art as an exemplifying act.

 

María Thereza Negreiros, who a long time ago established her art studio in Cali, is above all, a serious artist. Because she believes and proves that art should be a profession. And this is precisely one of the most rewarding issued when speaking of arts in moments during which  the interest towards them can so easily be misleading. There appears to be some mediocre painters that seem to assault, if not the integrity of the profession, at least its superficial appearance. In a society like ours, one must be aware of the most superficial aspects that surround us. 

 

María Thereza Negreiros does not set down on her purpose of creating an ever-changing art . She constantly seeks her own way of communicating what she feels. It is important to stress that the artist has a vast experience in different materials and mechanical means of expression.

 

Her production reaches true plastic conclusions that bring out her interest in optical sensations. An optic that always takes the viewer into account and make him be part of her art. María Thereza Negreiros achieves a series of images where Light, motion and the subtle use of color become part of a game. Because it is necessary to have fun and enjoy Maria Thereza Negreiros boxes. Nevertheless, the presence of eyes meticulously photographed and enlarged, do not make us believe that the work of art acts as a diversion from the social reality. On the contrary, María Thereza Negreiros relieves that her art can register to a certain point anguish, limitation and all sort of feelings proper of the dramatic situation of mankind.

 

 

Is it perhaps a vision of time through those hallucinating eyes that seem to measure not only the present, but also the past and the future, sensing what will be without burying what was? Those long-gone times and those that are coming seem to be within Maria Thereza Negreiros’ mind, in that immense concave lens that exhibits homage to Botticelli. Vision that can bring hope and hopelessness that can be avoided by knowing that it will arrive with the same inexorable movement of the stars. It seems to transport space within the same module as the small cylinders, fixing it on the incommensurable horizon of the human eye. Advanced art that is surely within the perception of modern youth.  What there is no doubt about is that we have to divide the plasticity of painting, sculpture and plastic experiences. That pure, easel or mural painting has nothing to do with the applications of other materials that adapt themselves to the cultural process of the last scene of the 20th century.

 

María Victoria Aramendia

Notes about Art, El Espectador,
Bogotá, Colombia, 1974

While studying Maria Thereza Negreiros’ paintings from 1061 to 1965 and located in a surge of abstract informalism, we can follow a serious creative process and find that after ten years of constant and determinate searching she is fully reaching her goals.

 

“The exhibition of Maria Thereza Negreiros, Brazilian artist living in Cali, now at IBEU gallery, represents the work of a person who not only knows how to dose out the color of an object conscientiously, but also how to distribute its elements in a thought-out manner”.

 

Her angels, in a whole or fragmented conception, take up practically the whole surface in a geometric distribution, expanding until they reach the edges of the painting. At other times they box themselves in, in an arbitrary manner as though it were a puzzle.

 

The sensual material is not only a vehicle; the artist needs it for her manner of expression. Maria Thereza Negreiros is an independent and secure artist. We might even say a monster, referring to strength and conscience. Her new conception shows us a purified work of art, vibrant, sensual and free.

 

IBEU Gallery, exhibited Maria Thereza Negreiros, a Brazilian painter living in Colombia, where she is well-known. A vigorous and personal artist who uses new materials with an admirable technique and who understood the real spirit of the new conception that is not an academic conception with a sort of modern sauce. Maria Thereza Negreiros presented one of the most important expositions of the year.

 

After the light, almost imponderable births on the white lacquers, the formal world begins to take shape. A thick undulant movement grows and becomes evident; the outline of a river, the curved perimeter of a crater, the rounded hills on an imaginary landscape, the discovery of a nature that is no more than movement and the hot colors strongly nourish the painting and remove all of the initial melancholy. The painting is heavy, burns due to the reds and yellows, it becomes repoussé. The imaginary nature ornaments itself. Splendid battles explode within the colors. One painting adorns itself with red, another with ochre, another with gray. The colors are pennants that illuminate the genesis.

 

This refined work, original, nonconformist, tenacious, emerges from the habitual limitations of abstract art. It is, in Colombia another art that can magnificently guide the public to the difficult beauty of unknown and ignored things.

 

María Thereza Negreiros art is extremely seductive. Her Series Butterfly Wings (Alas de Mariposa) is swift and full of grace and light.  It is a beautiful, abstract yet explicit series. The artist feels at ease with the sensible and feminine aspect of color, and with the intelligent and efficient line and planes of form. This is most unusual. She assertively expresses her bewilderment regarding the art subject and strongly shows her will to dissolve it into something that, at the end of the process, will always be defined as Light and color. There is something childish and really innocent in this profound attachment to color and light. I am convinced that this creates the boldness of her art and the bewitchment on the viewer.

 

Marta Traba

Bogotá, Colombia, 1961