Sergio Camargo 1930-1990

In 1946, he studied at the Altamira Academy in Buenos Aires with Emilio Pettoruti (1892-1971) and Lucio Fontana (1899-1968). In Europe, to where he traveled in 1948, he took a free philosophy course at the Sorbonne in Paris with Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962). During this period, he was impacted by the work of Constantin Brancusi, whose studio he visited frequently. In 1953, back in Brazil, he moved closer to the painter Milton Dacosta (1915-1988), who was producing his main constructivist works.

 

Between 1960 and 1973, he moved back to Paris and attended art sociology classes with Pierre Francastel (1900-1970) at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes. During this period he worked in his Malakoff atelier, south of Paris, and approached the Soldani atelier in Massa-Carrara, Italy – at which time he made his first works in marble. Invited by the English art critic Guy Brett, he held his first solo show abroad in 1964, at the Signals Gallery in London. In late 1973 he returned to Brazil and settled in Rio de Janeiro, where he began building his studio in Jacarepaguá.

 

He executed several works for public spaces, including a structural wall for the Palace of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Brasilia (1967); the column Homenagem a Brancusi [Homage to Brancusi] for the Faculty of Medicine in Bordeaux, France (1972) and a wall for the Itaú Business Center in São Paulo (1983-1986). He presented works in the Biennials of São Paulo (1955; 1957), Paris (1963), and Venice (1966), as well as in the Kassel documenta (1968).

 

After his death in December 1990, an international traveling exhibition was held in several museums between 1994 and 1996. In 2000, to commemorate ten years since his death, Sergio Camargo was given a permanent visiting site at the Paço Imperial in Rio de Janeiro.