Eleonore Koch was a German-born painter who immigrated to Brazil in the 1930s. Landscapes, interior scenes and still lifes are recurrent genres in the artist’s career. Koch pays close attention to drawing, composition, and color choices. She has mostly worked with egg tempera, a technique widely used in Renaissance painting, which gives her work a distinctive quality within the artistic context of her time. In her work, objects, people, landscapes and everyday scenes are delicately portrayed and lend themselves more to the painter’s meticulous craft than to depicting reality with symbolic or allegorical representations.  

After a period spent in Paris, where she lived and studied painting from 1948 to 1950, Koch returned to Brazil and began attending the studio of Alfredo Volpi, who mentored her over the years. In 1966, Koch participated in an exhibition in London, where she went to live from 1968. The city’s parks soon became the subject of her paintings, among the many landscapes she created throughout her life. She returned to live in Brazil in 1989. Only recently has Koch’s work aroused growing interest both inside and outside Brazil. Her introspective attitude, somewhat detached from the aesthetic and thematic trends of her time, makes her work unique and fascinating. Her painting is now widely recognized for its evocative character and its subtle elegance.    

IIn 2009, a selection of her works was presented at the Centro Universitário Maria Antonia, São Paulo, in an exhibition aimed to reopen the debate around her artistic production. Koch was prominently featured in the 34th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2021), and also participated in the 1959 and 1967 editions. She has had recent solo exhibitions at institutions such as MAC USP, São Paulo, Brazil (2024); MAR, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2022); Fundación Fernando de Castro, Madrid, Spain (2022) and Modern Art, London, UK (2020). Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at institutions like Museo Madre, Naples, Italy (2024) and the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil (2018). Her work is part of several collections including Tate Modern, London, UK; MAC USP, São Paulo; Pinacoteca de São Paulo and MAM São Paulo.