Rubem Valentim

The Approach is proud to present the first solo exhibition in the UK of one of the key figures of 20th-century Brazilian art and Afro-Atlantic histories: Rubem Valentim (1922 – 1991). This exhibition features Valentim’s signographic paintings and votive sculptures conceived during the years 1972 to 1990. Starting out as a self-taught painter, Valentim began his practice towards the end of the 1940s. The artist adopted the European artistic languages—which dominated the Brazilian art production scene during the 1950s and 60s—only then to pool and transmute various elements of Afro-Atlantic symbols into a complex rubric of his own. A constant theme that runs through Valentim’s works is his continued preoccupation with geometric abstraction vis-à-vis anthropological studies of Afro-Brazilian cultures and religions, specifically that of the Northeast and his hometown Bahia. Contrary to the avant-gardists who used constructivism and abstraction as neutralising compositional tools, Valentim imbued his geometric abstractions with mysticism and religious symbols of Candomblé and Umbanda.