Rubens Gerchman
(Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1942 – São Paulo, Brazil, 2008) Painter and mixed media artist. The pictorial work he developed since the sixties shows the plurality and the cultural and social differences taking place in the Rio de Janeiro of the twentieth century, being key to manifestations such as the New Figuration in Brazil. Later on, he would create a referential image for the Carioca culture: the cover of the album-manifesto Tropicália ou Panis et Circensis (1968), with which he would establish a close bond with figures of this movement such as Hélio Oiticica. From the experimentation with media such as sculpture and the body, his interest in the urban is transferred to works such as Cartilha do superlativo (1967-1972), a series of large-format sculptures of words placed in certain environments and conceived as "super-pamphlets," which allowed the artist to reach an urban scale and to dialogue directly with the city. For his part, his interest in education led him to found the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage (EAV), a free school that remains a reference to the day for the arts in the region.
