13/06 – 16/06/24
Art Basel 2024
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Photo: Dawn Blackman

Photo: Dawn Blackman

Photo: Dawn Blackman

Photo: Dawn Blackman

About

For the Feature section of Art Basel 2024, Almeida & Dale presents a selection of works by Heitor dos Prazeres (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1898-1966), including oil paintings on canvas, wood and cardboard, mainly made in the 1950s and 1960s. The set of works highlights the artist’s unique and vibrant style, marked by the expressiveness of colors and the representation of themes related to Black Brazilian culture, scenes of daily life, popular festivals, samba dancers, bohemians and other stock characters of Rio de Janeiro, with subtle but unmistakable political underpinnings.

Heitor dos Prazeres’ work reflects the post-slavery reality of Brazil’s Black population at a time when the cultural elites of Rio de Janeiro and Brazil generally were still focused on the colonialist values of white Europeans. In a deliberate contrast, the artist depicted what he saw, felt, andexperienced as a Black man in Brazil: the migration flows of Africans and their descendants from the countryside to urban centers, religiosity, police repression, capoeira, samba, affectivity, among other themes. So radical wasPrazeres’ approach, and so relevant to Black Brazilians’ fight for freedom and equality, that he was censored in one of the first acts of the country’s new military dictatorship in 1964.

Before dedicating himself to painting, a practice he adopted in the mid-1930s in a self-taught manner, Prazeres had already built his artistic career as a musician and dancer, with samba as the central character of his work, in addition to having also worked as a joiner, tailor and shoeshiner. “Heitor was, in his time, what we would call today a multimedia artist,” says Haroldo Costa, who accompanied Prazeres on his 1966 visit to Dakar.

Prazeres’ unmistakable representation of bodies and landscapes, as well as the visual force of dance in his paintings, carry a strong sense of cultural identity. The world of work in rural areas, children’s games, leisure and religiosity are some of the themes he represented in works inspired by the people and places he frequented throughout his life.

In the collection of the Museum of Modern Art – MoMA in New York since the 1940s and a key contributor to the First World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966, Prazeres gained prominence in his lifetime through a rich, varied, sophisticated artistic production. In 1951, the artist received the third prize for painting at the Bienal de São Paulo with Moenda, now in the collection of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea of the University of São Paulo – MAC USP, and the following year he was part of the Brazilian representation at the Venice Biennale with the works Mercado and Batuque.

He has held solo exhibitions in spaces such as the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, as well as group shows in Brazil and in countries such as Argentina, Senegal, England, France, Germany, among others. His career has been the subject of several exhibitions, including a major retrospective at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil – CCBB Rio de Janeiro curated by Pablo León de la Barra, Raquel Barreto and Haroldo Costa. Besides MoMA, Prazeres’ work is part of public collections that include Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro – MAM Rio; Museu Afro Brasil Emanuel Araujo, São Paulo; Museu de Arte do Rio – MAR, Rio de Janeiro; Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand – MASP; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo – MAM SP; Pinacoteca de São Paulo e Fundação Roberto Marinho, Rio de Janeiro, among others.