Thomaz Farkas: Memories and Discoveries

Luciana Brito Galeria is pleased to be the first gallery to represent (since 2013) and now to hold a solo show of Thomaz Farkas. His career has been focused by several solo and anthological group shows through varied biases since the 40’s, besides a major work on research and preservation held by Instituto Moreira Salles since 2007. However, this selection curated by Sergio Burgi and João Farkas, have densified an unprecedentedly wide panorama of the artist’s oeuvre. Its segments – dedicated to his production as a photographer, filmmaker, and cultural entrepreneur – puts together early works (featuring an unpublished series, from his famous essays with dancers shot in 1946), films (his later interest in documentary cinema drove him to start the Caravana Farkas, an iconic series depicting Brazilian culture), documents. A rare color series will also be exhibited.

Thomaz Farkas is one of the leading names in modern Brazilian photography, alongside artists such as Gaspar Gasparian and Geraldo de Barros. He created his first authorial series in 1942, upon joining Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante, of which Farkas would become one of the foremost members. The group created works relating to the advances in the then-modern art of photography, and is considered a pioneer of the language in Brazil. Departing from pictorialism and from photography based on traditional painting genres (portrait, landscape etc.), the artists focused on aspects of the photographic medium itself, distancing themselves from the treatment of photographs as mere reproductions.

Born in Budapest (1924) and based in São Paulo since age 6, Thomaz Farkas was the son of the founder of Fotoptica, a pioneering photographic equipment retail company in Brazil. He had his first solo show in 1949, at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art. In that same year, the photographer’s work was shortlisted for a show at the MoMA in New York, which also purchased seven of his pieces. Farkas was voted on four different occasions to represent Brazil at the Photographic Society of America. He was responsible for the establishing of the departments of photography at MASP and the MAM. In addition to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the photographer’s work is part of the collections of the São Paulo State Art Gallery (Pinacoteca), Maison Européene de la Photographie and Moreira Salles Institute (which dedicated an anthology book to him in 2010-11), among other organizations. Farkas died in São Paulo, in 2011.

As part of the exhibition, a series of public programs (talks and meetings) will be taking place, and a comprehensive catalogue edited and designed by Kiko Farkas will be launched.