IONE SALDANHA (1919-2001)
IONE SALDANHA (1919-2001)
IONE SALDANHA (1919-2001)
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IONE SALDANHA (1919-2001)
7 More
IONE SALDANHA (1919-2001)

Bambu

Details
IONE SALDANHA (1919-2001)
Bambu
acrylic on bamboo
i) 66 x 5 ¾ in. (167.6 x 17.6 cm.)
ii) 68 ½ x 6 in. (174 x 15.2 cm.)
iii) 79 x 4 ¾ in. (200.7 x 12.1 cm.)
iv) 73 x 5 ¾ in. (185.4 x 14.6 cm.)
v) 74 ¾ x 6 ¼ in. (189.9 x 15.9 cm.)
overall dimensions are variable when installed.
Executed circa 1960s.

Five in one lot.
Provenance
Solomon and Ruth Cohn collection, Rio de Janeiro
Claude and Heddy Erbsen collection, New York (by descent from the above)

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Kristen France
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Lot Essay

“To take an object with a perfect function and perfect in the simplicity of its useful form,” Saldanha once reflected, in relation to her practice. “To transform it into something uncalled for, useless, unusable, but of total necessity: getting out of oneself, out of time, completely just because” (in P. Quintella, “The Important Thing is to Have No Intention,” Ione Saldanha: The Invented City, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, 2022, p. 56). That sense of playfulness, and wonder, percolated through her work as she moved into abstraction and explored languages of geometry, architecture, and color. Born in Alegrete and based in Rio de Janeiro over a career that spanned seven decades, Saldanha first emerged within the constructivist and Neo-Concrete ferment of postwar Brazil. Early, architectonic paintings of the urban landscape evolved into sculptural abstraction by the 1960s as she developed her iconic series: the Ripas (Slats), the Bambus (Bamboos), the Bobinas (Spools), the Empilhados (Stacks), and the Tábuas (Planks). In dialogue with the contemporary work of such artists as André Cadere, Anne Truitt, Frans Krajcberg, Alfredo Volpi, Lygia Clark, and Hélio Oiticica, Saldanha’s practice explored relationships between constructivism and craft and between nature and (popular) culture, often informed by traditional Brazilian mores. She has lately found international acclaim, with her first solo show in the United States at Salon 94 (New York) this summer and with a star turn in the 60th Venice Biennale, where her Bambus currently hang from the ceiling of the Central Pavilion.

“One day I thought: ‘I’m going to paint a bamboo,’” Saldanha recalled. “It was almost by chance. Maybe because I love trees so much. I got some bamboos, at first some thin ones. Later, as I developed my work I delved into the bamboo form, and, in this case, what I wound up doing was I painted the bamboo” (in F. Atala, “Interview,” Ione Saldanha, p. 283). She was long familiar with her subject—“I have seen bamboos since I was a child, there are a lot of bamboo groves where I come from. . . . it came naturally”—and she began the series in 1967. “Although the Bambu is extracted directly from nature, it goes through a long process of preparation, involving drying, sanding down, and priming, which takes about six months,” explains curator Adriano Pedrosa. “Subsequently, Saldanha paints it, in a single day. The Bambu remains very much recognizable as bamboo, and we may see its texture and roughness, its lines and reliefs, as well as, in certain cases, writings and carvings they have received by passers-by in their previous life—as bamboo in nature” (“Ione Saldanha’s Radicality: Ripas and Bambus,” Ione Saldanha, p. 29).

The present Bambus are palimpsests of just this kind: their natural history is preserved even as they take on a new objecthood, painted in rich, resonant hues of red, blue, teal, and ocher. Their tactility is countered by the luminosity of the pigment, the surface animated by changing densities of color and brushstroke across their irregular, cylindrical surfaces. The experience of viewing the Bambus is experiential and phenomenological, inviting a sensory experience between the body of the viewer and the body of the Bambu. “To live feeling things, objects for themselves,” Saldanha suggested. “To feel the earth with your hand and be a little like the earth. To take a tree, be the tree and be together with the tree” (in P. Quintella, “The Important Thing is to Have No Intention,” p. 59). The animism of the Bambus also stood out to the Brazilian critic Frederico Morais. “The horizontal bands of color encircle the entire surface, painting without another side, a kinetic object,” he wrote. “At the same time, these are totems, columns from some unfinished temple, or beings seeking human interaction. In their natural habitat, the bamboos bend at the ends to form the gothic arch of the cathedral-forest. Isolated, they speak of man, the vertical being, each knot indicating the stages of his spiritual growth. Dressed in color, they become the creation of man, an artwork, a work by Ione” (“Bobinas and Empilhados or the City of Ione,” Ione Saldanha, p. 275).

Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park

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