Galeria Zielinsky is pleased to present “Brutiful”, the first solo show by Leonardo Finotti. The exhibition will take place from April 8 to June 18, 2021 in our space in Barcelona (Passatge Mercader, 10) and will feature the photographic production developed by the artist for two decades. Finotti photographs different emblematic architectural spaces in cities such as Milan, Chandigarh, Valparaíso, Caracas, São Paulo and Salvador de Bahía. These spaces host projects by architects such as Lina Bo Bardi, Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Roberto Burle Marx, Paulo Mendes da Rocha and Aurelio Galfetti and are recorded under the precise gaze of Leonardo Finotti who seeks to bring with his images a reflection on plastic and architectural Modern thought.
The title of the exhibition is a neologism between the words Brutalism and Beautiful. In advance Brutalism is usually associated with something cold or at the same time ugly, although Finotti’s images seek a dialogue between the truth of the materials used and the visual construction of each building. Black and white photographs with a tactile contrast that at the same time reveal austerity, by capturing the rigorous lines of the scene, and the organic quality present around each building, the landscape is always a witness against the concrete and both interact .
Regarding the artist’s photographs, Jorge Gambini reveals to us: “Finotti’s photography is heir to the frontality and precision of the Düsseldorf School. His work establishes links with the photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher, its founders, but also with the work of Candida Höfer, Petra Wunderlich and Andreas Gursky, so it is part of a photographic tradition in which the image transcends its testimonial value, linking the documentary record with a constructive ‘conceptuality’ in which the object participates as a material substrate of the image ”.
Leonardo Finotti (1977, Uberlândia) is a Brazilian artist who currently lives in São Paulo, Brazil. His career as a photographer is structured around two complementary pillars: a rigorous exploration of Modern Architecture, and an inquiry into informal urban spaces. After graduating as an Architect and concluding a post-graduation degree at the Bauhaus Foundation (Dessau, Germany), he began his career as a photographer in Portugal in close collaboration with important Portuguese architects. In parallel, he began a project of interpretation of Modern Architecture, which continued in Brazil after his return.
His work is part of important public and private collections: Carnegie Museum of Art (USA), Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (Germany), Fundação EDP (Portugal), AzW (Austria), MOT (Japan), Cité de L’Architecture & du Patrimoine (France), MAR-Museu de Arte do Rio (Brazil). He represented Brazil at the Venice Architecture Biennale, at the Mercosur Biennial and was awarded at the XV Buenos Aires International Architecture Biennial. In 2008 he was invited by Barry Bergdoll, chief curator of MoMA (New York), to take part in the exhibition “Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980”. This project, carried out over seven years, visually reinterprets the legacy of modern architecture in Latin America. In addition to integrating the exhibition and the catalog, the museum acquired 15 works by Leonardo Finotti for its permanent collection.
