Sergio Camargo

Sérgio de Camargo (April 8, 1930 – 1990) was a sculptor and relief maker, born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Sergio De Camargo studied at the Academia Altamira in Buenos Aires under Emilio Pettoruti and Lucio Fontana. Camargo also studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. On a protracted trip through Europe in 1948, Camargo met Brâncuși, Arp, Henri Laurens and Georges Vantongerloo. Sérgio de Camargo showed work at numerous international exhibitions, including the 1965 São Paulo Biennale (where he won a gold medal), the 1966 Venice Biennale, and the 1968 documenta in Kassel. Sérgio de Camargo died in Rio de Janeiro in 1990. The Tate Gallery in London has one of de Camargo's work in their permanent collection.

Early life and education Sergio Camargo was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1930. Camargo began his art education at the Academia Altamira in Buenos Aires under Lucio Fontana and Emilio Pettoruti . He would later move to Paris in 1948, where he enrolled at the Academie de la Grand Chaumiere.

When Carmargo returned home to Brazil in the 1950s, he stumbled into the rising Neo-Concrete Constructivist and Kinetic Op Art movements.

In 1952-53 he again returned to Europe and went to China in 1954. Between 1961 and 1974 Sérgio de Camargo remained in Paris, where he became a member of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV) in 1963. The wood reliefs, monochromatic in nature allowed for simple and repetitive logic with only subtle alterations. With such slight variations arranged across an otherwise flat plane, there became thousands of compositional possibilities. These wood reliefs communicated a specific message of light and its surroundings. Gaston Bachelard would frame it, light and shadow ‘inhabit’ the work such that it can ‘transcend geometrical space’.

In 1965, he found success in South America as well In 1965 Camargo would continue his success and recognition with his first solo museum exhibition at the Museu de Arte Modern do Rio de Janeiro. Also in 1965, he began sculptural pieces for Oscar Niemeyer's Foreign Ministry Building in Brasília.Eventually, by 1967, he contributed a monumental element to the site—a rhythmically structured 25 meter wall.

During the late 1960s Sérgio de Camargo showed work at numerous international exhibitions, including the 1965 São Paulo Biennale, the 1966 Venice Biennale, and the 1968 documenta in Kassel.

Return to Brazil Carmargo decided it was time to leave Europe and subsequently returned to Brazil in 1973. While Carmargo had been gone Brazil had been in a time of prosperity with the rise in exportation of newly found oil repositories. Carmargo’s return to Brazil would bring about a new phase within his practice. It is the later works of Carmargo’s that seem to be defined by a return to previous forms and experiments. In 1977 he won the sculpture award given by the São Paulo Association of Art Critics. In the 1980s his works largely returned to the original cylindrical forms, as well as shrinking in scale. During the evolution of the Constructivist art movement, Sergio de Carmargo and his peers were inspired by two specific events, the establishment of the Biennial in 1951, and the inauguration of Brasilia in 1960. Artworks created during this period range widely in there different approaches to the rules of constructivist art. The contributions of these artists began a highly original period in the history of modernism. When it comes to the whole of Brazilian art there are few independent artists like Camargo that simplified an already complex visual language through his “highly iconoclastic approaches”. Brazilian constructivism lies within the need to have universal communion and communication.

Exhibitions Camargo’s work is represented in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Birmingham Museum of Art, AL; Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris; Dallas Museum of Art; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland; Camargo’s work has been the subject of major retrospectives at the Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, in 1993; the Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam, in 1994; and the Instituto de Arte Contemporânea, São Paulo, in 2010, which traveled to the Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil, in 2012.