Nelson Leirner: Meaning

Nelson Leirner was a prominent visual artist and professor from Brazil, recognized for his contributions to the national and international art scene. His work encompasses various mediums, including painting, sculpture, and installations. He was associated with the Brazilian neoconcrete movement, which emerged in the 1950s and emphasized the integration of art with everyday life.

Leirner gained fame for his conceptual approach, often incorporating found objects and everyday items into his works. He used irony and humor to comment on consumer culture, mass media, and the commercialization of art.

BIOGRAPHY

Nelson Leirner was born on January 16, 1932, in São Paulo, Brazil. His father, Isai Leirner, was the director of the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo and the founder of the Galeria de Arte da Folha de São Paulo. His mother, Felícia Leirner, was a prominent sculptor who had close ties with the avant-garde in Brazil.

Between 1947 and 1958, Leirner lived in the United States, where he began his studies in Plastic Arts.

Upon returning to Brazil, he held his first solo exhibition in São Paulo in 1961.

In 1966, he founded the Grupo Rex, along with artists Wesley Duke Lee, José Resende, Carlos Fajardo, Geraldo de Barros, and Frederico Nasser. In 1967, the group was closed with the Exposição-Não-Exposição, in which the artists offered their works for free to the public, leaving the gallery completely empty.

In the same year, he sent a stuffed pig in a wooden crate with a ham attached to its neck to the 4th Modern Art Salon in Brasília. As provocative as Duchamp's Urinal, the proposal of bringing an object to a museum of art, the work was part of the series Matéria e Forma, and incredibly, the pig was accepted, making Nelson Leirner the most polemical contemporary Brazilian artist in the world art scene.

The Pig. Nelson Leirner. 1966 - stuffed pig in a wooden crate (83 x 159 x 62 cm)
Location: Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo/Brasil

In 1967, the artist created his first multiple-panel works built with canvas and zipper on a chassis, which became highly famous.

Presunto Engradado. Nelson Leirner. 2009

During the period of the Military Dictatorship, the artist created large allegories of the contemporary political situation in a series of drawings and prints. In 1974, he launched the series A Rebelião dos Animais, with works that harshly criticized the military regime, and it was through this series that he received the prize for best proposal of the year from the Association of Paulista Art Critics (APCA)

Between 1977 and 1997, he was a professor at the FAAP - Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (São Paulo), being the main responsible for the formation of several artists of this generation.

In 2009, he was invited to participate in the Ocupação project at the Itaú Cultural, where he used old works with an updated vision of the same. He brought back the Porco, and another work similar to it, which he titled Presunto Engradado.

Pacavoa. Nelson Leirner. 2010 - São Paulo Art Biennial

In 2010, during a projection at the São Paulo Art Biennial, the artist used the reference to build the work to be exhibited. A wooden and canvas replica of the model of the airplane created by Leonardo da Vinci during the Renaissance of the 15th century, with a stuffed animal as the pilot.

After years of work and dedication to Contemporary Art, Nelson Leirner passed away on March 7, 2020, at the age of 88, in his home located in the Jardim Botânico, in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro.

The legacy of Nelson Leirner continues to influence artists and his contributions are remembered as part of the broader narrative of Latin American and global contemporary art.

He declared:

"All art is provocative. Society and institutions have learned to demystify the artist, consuming what he does. Not making aesthetic concessions is what puts me, still, before society, in this type of redoma, of contestation." - Nelson Leirner