Brígida Baltar

Brígida Baltar (1959/1960 – 8 October 2022) was a Brazilian visual artist. Her work spanned across a wide range of mediums, including video, performance, installation, drawing, and sculpture. She was interested in capturing the ephemeral in her artwork.

Life and career

Brígida Baltar was born in 1959 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she lived and worked. Her career began in the 1990s, often working with primordial elements, such as the material she took from her own house in the neighbourhood of Botafogo. In recent years, Baltar's work was shown in institutions throughout Brazil and in the United States, Japan and Argentina, and other countries. She also took part in important group shows, such as The Peripatetic School – Itinerant Drawing From Latin America (2011), which premiered at the Drawing Room in London, and then toured to several other venues.

She participated in important Biennials, such as the I Biennial of the Americas, Denver (USA) (2010); 25a Bienal Internacional de São Paulo (2002); V Bienal de la Habana (1994); and 12a Bienal do Mercosul (2020). Her work is featured in important public collections such as MOCA Cleveland (USA); Blumenthal Collection (Boston, USA); MIMA Museum (Middlesbrough, United Kingdom); Coleccíon Copel, CIAC (México); Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo, Brazil); MAC-USP, Museu de Arte Contemporânea USP (São Paulo, Brazil); Itaú Cultural (São Paulo, Brazil); Fundação Joaquim Nabuco (Recife, Brazil); and the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).

Baltar died from leukemia on 8 October 2022, at the age of 62.

Works Baltar's artistic career began in the 1990s and crossed many different mediums. Baltar started from her home, where she would gather drops of rain seeping through openings in her roof, mixed with dusts from the clay bricks of her house.

In 2005, Baltar had to leave her house in the Rio de Janeiro district of Botafogo. During the fifteen years that preceded this event, the artist had lived and worked almost in a symbiosis with the old brick building. In Abrigo (1996), she carved the form of her body into the wall of the house and then entered that space. She ground up many of the red bricks from that house and used that as the medium for future drawings and sculptures.

Baltar strove to return to a pre-industrial, childlike and primitive narration.’ Baltar's artistic production began in the 1990s with the so-called small poetic gestures, developed in her studio-home in Botafogo.

In her work, Collecting Mist (1998–2004), which was shown at the New Museum, Baltar photographically captures herself in the Sisyphean task of trying to capture mist.

Baltar has had her work exhibited at LAMB Arts in São Paulo, Casas Riegner in Bogota, Bergamin & Gomide in São Paulo, Drawing Room in London, the Embassy of Brazil in London, Spencer Brownstone Gallery in New York, and Carbono Galeria in São Paulo. Her works are greatly influenced by the practices of the Brazilian Neo-Concrete artists Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica. According to Baltar she wanted to criticise the contemporary world of productivity surplus, that allows little room for daydreaming, for contemplation, etc. Museu de Arte Moderna de Recife, Brazil Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Galeria Laura Marsiaj, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 2004 Palm Beach Contemporary, Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts, Palm Beach, Florida, US Brazil: Body Nostalgia, The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, Japan 2005 Ainda Utopias, Laura Marsiaj Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (solo) Em Casa, Casa da Ribeira, Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (solo) Arte Brasileira Hoje, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Untitled, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, California, US São Francisco Bayennale, San Francisco, US O corpo, Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil L’autre Amerique, Passage de Retz, Paris, France 2006 Paralela, Pavilhão Armando de Arruda Pereira, São Paulo, Brazil Desenho Contemporâneo Brasileiro, MCO Arte Contemporânea, Porto, Portugal Draw-Drawing-2, The Foundry Gallery, London Biennale 2006, UK Um Céu Entre Paredes /An Indoor Heaven, Firstsite, Colchester, UK (solo) 2007 Contraditório, Panorama Brasileiro de Arte Contemporânea, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil Mais Precioso do que Prata, Centro Cultural da Caixa, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Pó de Casa, Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, Brazil (solo) Entre Paredes, 713 Arte Contemporânea, Buenos Aires, Argentina (solo) In search of the miraculous, University Gallery of Essex, Colchester, UK Itaú Contemporâneo, Brasil 1980–2007, Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil Anos 80/90 Modernos e Pós-Modernos, Instituto Tomie Otake, São Paulo, Brazil Karma International, Zurich, Switzerland Passagem Secreta, Projeto Respiração, Fundação Eva Klabin, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Incisão, Centro Cultural Banco do Nordeste Cariri, Ceará, Brazil Resplandores, Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2008 Arte e música, Paisagens sonoras Caixa Cultural Brasília, DF, Brasil Masamerica, Canal Mediateca, Caixa Forum, Barcelona, Spain Estranha coletiva, Galeria Durexart, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Leveza e aspereza da linha, Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, Brazil Contradictorio, Panorama de Arte Brasileiro, Alcalá, Madrid, Spain Sertão Contemporâneo, Caixa Cultural do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Paper trail, 15 Brazilian Artists, Allsopp Contemporary Gallery, London, UK Mão Dupla, Sesc Pinheiros, São Paulo, Brazil 2010 Constructing Views: Experimental Film and Video from Brazil, New Museum, New York, USA 2012 SAM Art Project, in Paris, France; O amor do pássaro rebelde, at Cavalariças, Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage (EAV Parque Lage), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (solo) 2016 International Series: Contemporary Artists from Brazil, at Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, in Boone, USA. 2017 Neither-nor: Abstract Landscapes, Portraits and Still Lives, at Terra-Art Project, in London, UK 2018 A carne do mar, at Galeria Nara Roesler, in São Paulo, Brazil Abstracción textil \ Textile Abstraction, at Galería Casas Riegner, in Bogotá, Colombia 2019 Filmes at Galeria BNDES (solo) Dois vídeos, at Galeria Gustavo Schnoor Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; I Remember Earth, at Magasin des Horizons, Centre d'arts et de cultures, in Grenoble, France Studiolo XXI – Desenhos e afinidades, at Fundação Eugénio de Almeida Centro de Arte e Cultura, in Évora, Portugal 2022 The Fold in the Horizon, Nara Roesler, New York, USA (feature in group show) 2023 Brígida Baltar (1959-2022): To Make the World a Shelter, Nara Roesler, New York, USA