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Bio Summary

Regina Silveira - Artists - Alexander Gray Associates

Regina Silveira, 2018. Photo: Ross Collab

Regina Silveira (b.1939) was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil and lives in São Paulo. Throughout more than four decades, Silveira, a critical figure in Brazilian conceptual art, has investigated the tension between movement and spatial perspective, threading political meaning into installations that respond to specific sites. In the 1950s she began her artistic training under the tutelage of expressionist Brazilian painter Iberê Camargo, studying lithography and woodcut, as well as painting. Renowned for her parodic explorations of space through geometric constructs, Silveiraʼs work is celebrated for both its conceptual rigor and formal impact.

Biography

Regina Silveira (b.1939) was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil and lives in São Paulo. For more than five decades, Silveira, a critical figure in Brazilian conceptual art, has investigated the tension between movement and spatial perspective, threading political meaning into installations that respond to specific sites. In the 1950s she began her artistic training under the tutelage of expressionist Brazilian painter Iberê Camargo, studying lithography and woodcut, as well as painting. Renowned for her parodic explorations of space through geometric constructs, Silveiraʼs work is celebrated for both its conceptual rigor and formal impact.

During the 1970s she experimented with printmaking and video, engaging with the dynamic developments of the Brazilian art world and the country’s politics at a time of military repression. Throughout her career, she has investigated the representation of reality, and the meaning of visual imagery. Her artistic vocabulary includes various methods of perspectival projection, including skiagraphia (the study of shadows) and the appropriation of shadows of ordinary objects to create duality and tension. Silveira is particularly interested in the paradoxical relationship between presence and absence, a notion that she has examined by incorporating tracks and foot imprints into her visual vocabulary. For Silveira, printmaking is an open field for graphic experimentation that also includes video, sculpture, and spacial interventions of architectural proportions.

Silveira has exhibited widely throughout Europe and the Americas, including one-person exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo (MAC USP), Brazil (2022); Paço das Artes, São Paulo, Brazil (2020); Pavilion Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA (2019); Museu Brasileiro de Escultura (MuBE), São Paulo, Brazil (2018); Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil (2018); Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil (2015); Museu Chácara do Céu, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2015); Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico (2014); The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2012); Iberê Camargo Foundation, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2011); Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (2009); Køs Museum of Art in Public Spaces, Koge, Denmark (2009); Museo de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia (2008); and Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (2005), among others. Her work is represented in public collections internationally, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Miami Art Museum, FL; San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan; Museo Nacional Centro de Arts Reina Sofia, Spain; Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil, among others. Silveira received the Prêmio Governador do Estado de São Paulo and the MASP–Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand Award for Career, accompanied by an exhibition in 2013, and the Brazilian Art Critics Association gave her the Award for Life and Work in 2012. Regina Silveira is also represented by Luciana Brito Galeria, São Paulo, Brazil.

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Public Collections

Agnes Etherington Art Center, Kingston, Canada
Biblioteca Mário de Andrade, São Paulo, Brazil
Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, TX
Dragão do Mar Arte e Cultura, Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil
Inhotim, Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Instituto de Cultura Contemporânea (ICC), São Paulo, Brazil
Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil
Museo de Arte del Banco de La Republica, Bogotá, Colombia
Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Paraná, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil
Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo, Brazil
Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil
Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL
Pinacoteca Barão de Santo Ângelo, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil
Pinacoteca Municipal de São Paulo, Brazil
SESC, São Paulo, Brazil
Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan
Tiroche DeLeon Collection, Jaffa, Israel
Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY