An essential figure of Brazilian contemporary art, Leonilson is recognized for a singular body of work that draws on intimate aspects, a particular  vocabulary of symbols, and a wide-ranging experimentation with language and mediums such as painting, drawing, printmaking, embroidery, sculpture, and installation. 

Leonilson’s oeuvre records the pleasures of passion and sexual encounters, the pain of disillusionment and dissatisfaction with the state of the world, as well as the fear and doubt brought on by the fragility and finitude of life. By not shying away from addressing his homosexuality and his HIV-positive diagnosis after 1991, Leonilson created a body of work that is sensitive and delicate, yet deeply political, bringing private life into the public sphere against the moralism and stigmatization that prevailed at the time.

His works are present in the collections of major international museums, such as Tate Modern, London, UK; MoMA, New York, USA; MACBA, Barcelona, Spain; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Brazilian museums, such as MASP, MAM São Paulo, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, in São Paulo; MAM Rio de Janeiro; among others.   

In conjunction with the Leonilson Project — dedicated to preserving the artist’s legacy — Almeida & Dale organized the exhibition Leonilson. Corpo político, curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio, in 2022; exhibited the artist’s work at international art fairs; and supported the production of his catalogue raisonné. It also sponsored the retrospective exhibition Leonilson: Drawn (1975-1993), curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen, presented at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2020), Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2021), and Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2022).    

As a result of a partnership that has grown stronger over the years, Almeida & Dale is pleased to join Leonilson’s family and the Leonilson Project in representing and promoting the artist’s work. 

Leonilson is considered one of the leading names of the Geração 80 — a group of artists who returned to painting and embraced an expressive, pop language. Among the artists with whom he established contact during this period were Luiz Zerbini, Leda Catunda, Ana Maria Tavares, Sérgio Romagnolo, Eduardo Brandão, Ciro Cozzolino, and Jac Leirner.   

Leonilson studied at FAAP in São Paulo, where he took classes with Julio Plaza, Regina Silveira, and Nelson Leirner. His professional career began when he set up a studio with Zerbini and other artists in 1979. In 1980, he left formal education and began attending Aster, a space dedicated to art development and discussions created by Julio Plaza, Regina Silveira, Donato Ferrari, and Walter Zanini. That year, he held his first solo exhibition at the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, in Salvador. The following year, he traveled to Madrid, Spain, and exhibited at Casa Brasil, where he did an artist residency. Then, he traveled to Germany, France, and Italy, where he met Antonio Dias, Arthur Luiz Piza, and his first gallerist, Enzo Cannaviello. He returned to Brazil in 1981. In 1984, Leonilson participated in the emblematic exhibition Como vai você, Geração 80? (How are you, Generation 80?) at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, in Rio de Janeiro.  

Leonilson’s early, more pictorial work is characterized by gestural freedom, large formats, and a preference for unframed canvases. His vigorous brushstrokes and intense colors prompted interpretations connecting his work to the Transavantgarde. However, at the end of the 1980s, Leonilson began to pursue a different aesthetic. Words, affections, and cartographies of the body gained prominence, and his work began featuring a complex constellation of references and graphic symbols such as hearts, ladders, volcanoes, spirals, globes, and combinations such as fire and water, compass and clock, and body and bridge. The drawn word, a fundamental characteristic of Leonilson’s work that he says he adopted more consciously in 1989, performs as both image and text. “Every word in Leo’s vast and rich lexicon fights fiercely against being dictionaryized,” wrote curator and friend Adriano Pedrosa.  

During interviews with curators Adriano Pedrosa in 1991 and Lisette Lagnado in 1992, Leonilson cited Antoni Tàpies, Joseph Beuys, Eva Hesse, Robert Ryman, Blinky Palermo, Paul Klee, Leda Catunda, Bispo do Rosário, Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Agnes Martin, Constantine Cavafy, and Marguerite Yourcenar as influences. He was attracted to the work of these artists because of its delicacy, materials used, and poetic approach.

By the end of the 1980s, the personal and autobiographical nature of his work had intensified. During this period, he also experimented with new techniques, incorporating sewing and embroidery into his work. Leonilson’s mature body of work reflects on the tenuous boundaries between what can be said and what lies in the realm of the incommunicable. Through his art, Leonilson created an intimate diary that is both private and open. In it, signs and codes reveal and conceal; the relationship between truth and fiction is strained; and ambiguity manifests itself as a poetic device. White spaces imbue his works with silence and delicacy, particularly in his drawings and engravings. The small size of his works on paper accentuates and concentrates what the artist wishes to convey.

Desire plays a central role in Leonilson’s visual discourse. According to curator Lisette Lagnado, Leonilson “was driven by a compulsion to record his inner self in order to dedicate it to objects of desire.” In 1991, he created Os dedicados (The Dedicated), a series in permanent ink and watercolor on paper in which each drawing represents a romantic encounter or interest. The male body as an object of interest and the pleasures and anxieties of romantic relationships were elaborated daily by Leonilson. In several pieces, the exposed heart and scar symbolize fragility and love, respectively, while the volcano and fire represent desi

In mid-1991, Leonilson was diagnosed with HIV. This prompted the artist to find new ways to express himself and cope with his finite time, such as the series O perigoso (The Dangerous One, 1992), which poetically reflects on his condition. 

While the Brazilian sociopolitical context of the 1980s and 1990s is not the focus of Leonilson’s work, many pieces comment on issues such as prejudice, social inequality, environmental destruction, and political corruption.

In 1991, Leonilson began illustrating the weekly column “Talk of Town” in Folha de S. Paulo. The 106 drawings he produced for the newspaper until 1993 gave him the opportunity to express his views on various subjects.   

In 1992, debilitated, Leonilson devoted himself mainly to drawings and embroidery, which he produced until a few days before his death. Leonilson’s final exhibition was held at the Capela do Morumbi in São Paulo. In Instalação sobre duas figuras (Installation on Two Figures), Lisette Lagnado writes that “the language demonstrates that it has transcended the question of appearance to manifest itself as a confession.” Leonilson was unable to see the exhibition. He passed away on May 28, 1993.

Numerous solo exhibitions have been organized around the work of Leonilson, a figure of international renown. The most recent of these exhibitions 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); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2020); Malmö Konsthall, Switzerland (2021); Americas Society, New York, USA (2017); Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil (2014). Notable group exhibitions include Como vai você, geração 80? , EAV Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1984); Histórias LGBTQIA+, MASP, São Paulo, Brazil (2024); three editions of the Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (1985, 1998, 2010); three editions of Panorama Atual da Arte Brasileira, São Paulo, Brazil (1980, 1989 2003); 13th Paris Biennale, France (1985); Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (1997, 2011); and Venice Biennale, Italy (2007).   

Leonilson’s works are part of numerous Brazilian and international collections, including: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom; Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina; MoMa, New York, USA; Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany; MAM Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; MAM São Paulo, Brazil; Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil; Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain; Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, Brazil, among others.