Fernando Zarif Brazilian, 1960-2010

1960, São Paulo, Brazil. 2010, São Paulo, Brazil.

 

 Fernando Zarif is the author of a vast production. Visionary and investigative, established a unique language independent of cultural precepts, joined avant-garde expressions like performances and video installations and has become an iconic figure of the 80's generation in São Paulo. In addition to video and performance he explored various artistic media such as writing, drawing, painting and music.

 

Born in São Paulo in 1960, at the age of 19 he began to attend the Architecture's course at the Federation of Colleges Braz Cubas, but did not complete. He devoted himself primarily to the free courses. Was apprenticed to the renowned concretist poet and artist Décio Pignatari and to the german musician Hans-Joachim Koellreutter. His first solo exhibition, at the age of 21, was at the Gabinete Fotográfico space in the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. In the following year, in 1983, he presented the performances Dois Movimentos, Concerto Plástico Digital I e Concerto Plástico Digital II, with music by Richard Wagner and John Cage, in the musical programation of MASP - Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand. In 1995 Fernando Zarif made his greatest solo exhibition in a Brazilian institution, O Corpo Humano e Outros Corpos, at the Museu de Arte Moderna of Rio de Janeiro. In the same year he participated in the group show II United Artists: Utopiaat Casa das Rosas in Sao Paulo. In 1997, also at Casa das Rosas, he attended the collective show Arte Suporte Computa-dor. In 1998 at the Maison des Arts André Marlaux he made a solo exhibition Le Musée Imaginaire Fernando Zarif, in Creteil, France. This was the largest exhibition of the artist and assembled works of the last ten years of his career. In 2009 he made part of the show Inventário do Tempo Livros, curated by Bia Lessa and Maria Borba, at Espaço Tom Jobim of Jardim Botânico, in Rio de Janeiro. Fernando Zarif died in 2010, in São Paulo. From the year of 2011, in his hometown, the family of the artist began the Fernando Zarif Project, which is intended to preserve, catalog and disseminate his work. To date, among photographs, books, documents and writings of the artist, were restored and cataloged around 2000 works. In 2014, after the release of the book Fernando Zarif - uma obra a contrapelo, organized by José Resende, the Institute Figueiredo Ferraz presented the first individual post mortem of the artist, in 2015. At the same year, in partnership with the Fernando Zarif Project, Luciana Brito Galeria made another important solo exhibition in tribute to his work.