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Thomaz Farkas
Pictóricos, Coloridos e Modernos
17.08 - 28.09.2024
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Thomaz Farkas’s work, produced through a life of intense experimentation and movement across diverse and complementary fields – as a businessman, photographer, producer, and documentarian – continues to resonate widely, far beyond the family sphere. So it’s hard to imagine a more definitive influence for those who, like me, closely followed his photographic series and films, and shared in his constant and enthusiastic efforts to foster our photographic culture and reveal the unique power of our popular culture.Thomaz was part of the generation that modernized Brazilian photography, enriching its thematic scope and aligning its language closer to international trends. He was dedicated to creating spaces for local image production to flourish, such as the Fotoptica magazine and the Fotoptica gallery. It was in the latter, with his unwavering support, that Videobrasil was born, initially focusing on the emerging Brazilian video production. In the waning years of Brazil’s dictatorship, the festival reaffirmed ideas dear to Thomaz’s practice: that no artistic production is detached from a political perspective, and that reality is just as important as aesthetics.Solange Oliveira Farkas, July 2024
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The exhibition Thomaz Farkas: Pictóricos, Coloridos e Modernos [Thomaz Farkas: Pictorial, Colorful and Modern] consists of two large sections. As visitors enter the Modernist Room at the beginning of the show, they will find a collection of around 60 vintage black-and-white photographs, developed and printed by the artist himself at the peak of his production during the 1940s. This is the largest selection of Thomaz Farkas’s vintage photographs ever presented to the public, most of them for the first time ever, arranged chronologically in thematic groups. The first exhibits a set of images of photographic equipment, taken by the artist as studio exercises, anticipating the group of photographs from the artist's pictorial phase, a concept that preceded modern photography by aiming to emulate the aesthetics of painting, especially with records of natural and urban landscapes, as well as portraits.
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Next, we see several significant works that represent the pinnacle of his formal experimentation, based on the search for new forms of visual expression, the use of innovative techniques, which utilize unusual angles, natural lighting and attention to the technical possibilities of cameras and the photographic laboratory, a phase that positioned him as one of the precursors of modern photography in Brazil.
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The 1940s saw a transformation in the practice of photography in Brazil. The work by members of the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante, founded in 1939, elevated photography to the status of an artistic medium, transforming it into a new window through which to view the world. A leading figure of this era, Thomaz Farkas carried out surrealist experiments using unconventional angles, producing works that reflected everyday urban life and the cityscape, particularly that of São Paulo. His perspective on the city reveals an intimate familiarity with its daily life and metamorphoses.
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During the organization of Thomaz Farkas’s archive, where over 34,000 photos were cataloged by IMS-SP, a rare selection of 4 x 5 inch Kodachrome (Kodak) films from the 1940s were discovered in perfect condition. These images reveal an artist in love with a still unpolluted metropolis, with blue skies and panoramic views of wide, uncrowded streets. They are an ode to architecture and to São Paulo’s inhabitants, captured from a romantic and intimate perspective, which also serves as a backdrop for various photographs of his then-future wife Melanie Rechulski, whose striking presence contrasts with the walls, facades, and other urban elements of the metropolis. Considered legendary by photography connoisseurs, this type of film for large-format cameras offered exceptional qualities of color and texture. But it required a difficult, extremely complex, and costly developing process, and was discontinued by Kodak.
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Thomaz Farkas“Thomaz Farkas I”, c. 1948/2024impressão jato de tinta com pigmento mineral sobre papel de algodão 310g
inkjet print with mineral pigment ink on cotton paper 310g100 x 80 cm
39.37 x 31.5 in
