José Leonilson’s production encompasses painting, drawing, illustration, embroidery, installation, and sculpture. In an exercise in synthesis, with each new phase Leonilson deliberately restricted his universe of signs. He developed his own vocabulary, in which aspects of eroticism and sexuality were central. Recent readings of his production have highlighted the not only affective and intimate, but also political meaning of Leonilson’s aesthetic choices. 

An artist from Ceará who built his career in São Paulo, Leonilson is considered one of the main names of the 80s Generation in Brazil, a group of artists linked to a return to painting and an approach to an expressive and pop language. Marked by vigorous gestures and intense colors, Leonilson’s early works instigated readings on the connection with the Transvanguard. Among the most significant influences were Antonio Dias, Blinky Palermo and Paul Klee. His initial pictorial production, developed between 1983 and 1988, is characterized by a search for the “pleasure of painting,” which is combined with freedom of gesture. The preferred support is canvas, without a frame, in large format works. 

At the end of the 1980s, Leonilson began to follow a path that led him to very different aesthetic choices from this first phase of his production. His work with words and cartographies of the body stands out, with a complex universe of references and graphic symbols. Among the systematically elaborated images are the atom, the tower, the heart, the staircase, the open book, the mountain, the volcano, the spiral, and others that are superimposed by the artist, such as fire and water, the compass and the clock, the hourglass and the mathematical symbol for infinity.

Leonilson’s mature production reflects on the tenuous boundaries between what can be said and what is incommunicable, creating a diary that is both private and open. According to curator Lisette Lagnado, “Leonilson was driven by the compulsion to record his interiority in order to dedicate it to objects of desire.”

From 1989 onwards, his work took on an even more intimate and delicate tone. At this point, the artist invested in new procedures, resorting to sewing and embroidery. The personal and autobiographical character intensifies in the works created from mid-1991 onwards, the year he discovered he was living with the HIV virus. With direct repercussions on his poetic language, the discovery of the disease led Leonilson to develop new metaphorical ways of expressing his own experience. The works from this period are cloaked in silence, represented by blank spaces, mainly in his drawings and engravings. The format, usually tiny, accentuates the intimate and simple sense that moves Leonilson to express himself.

Leonilson’s works are often metonymies of the artist’s body, and face the dangers of exposure to the gaze of others. It is also common for him to play with references that confuse the viewer as to whether his works are true or fictional. According to curator Adriano Pedrosa, “Every word in Leo’s vast and rich lexicon fights fiercely against dictionaryization.” 

Internationally renowned artist, Leonilson have been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, the most recent of which were organized by MASP, São Paulo, Brazil (2024); Pinacoteca do Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil (2023); Almeida & Dale, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2022); Malmö Konsthall, Switzerland (2021); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2020); Americas Society, New York, USA (2017); Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil (2014). Among the group exhibitions, the following stand out: Como vai você, geração 80?, EAV Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1984); Histórias LGBTQIA+, MASP, São Paulo, Brazil (2024); An Act of Seeing that Unfolds: The Susanna and Ricardo Steinbruch, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain (2023); three editions of the Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2010, 1998, 1985); the 13th Paris Biennale, France (1985); the Istanbul Biennale, Turkey (1997, 2011); and the Venice Biennale, Italy (2007).

José Leonilson’s works are part of numerous institucional collections in Brazil and abroad, including: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Tate Modern, London, UK; Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina; MoMa, New York, USA; Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil; Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Museu de Arte Contemporânea of the Universisty of São Paulo, Brazil; Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, Brazil, among others.