Rodrigo de Castro Andrade (São Paulo, SP, 1962). Painter, engraver, graphic artist. He began his training in printmaking at Sérgio Fingermann's studio in São Paulo in 1977, and in the following year he attended the Studio of Graphics Arts in Glasgow, Scotland. He studied drawing with Carlos Fajardo in 1981, and took courses in engraving and painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris between 1981 and 1982. Back in Brazil, between 1982 and 1985, he was part of the Casa 7 group. In 1984, he took part in the 2° Salão Paulista de Arte Contemporânea, where he won the revelation prize, and in 1985 he took part in the 18ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo and the 8° Salão Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Rio de Janeiro, where he won the acquisition prize. He held his first solo exhibition in 1986, at Subdistrito Comercial de Arte, in São Paulo. Since 1987, he has worked as a graphic artist for magazines and books and, between 1991 and 1998, produced covers for Veja magazine. In 1991, he received the Brasília de Artes Plásticas award, from the Museu de Arte de Brasília - MAB. That same year, he took part as a teacher in the project A Produção Refletida, at Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade, in São Paulo. Since 2001, he teaches a course on contemporary art at Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo - MAM/SP.
Analysis
In the early 1980s, Rodrigo Andrade, like other artists from the Casa 7 group, produced works that showed affinities with the production of German neo-expressionists, and also made reference to the work of American painter Philip Guston. At that time, Andrade painted large-format canvases, with broad brushstrokes and contrasting colors. As noted by the critic Roberto Pontual, in his work the figures, objects and scenes, generally of interiors, suffered a fragmentation that did not hide their existence, but rather suspended them in the condition of a puzzle to be reconstituted by the gaze. From 1985 on, his painting revealed a gestuality that undermined more evident compositions. In 1999, Andrade's production underwent major changes. His canvases presented monochromatic rectangular or circular forms laid out on neutral surfaces. As the critic Adriano Pedrosa pointed out, his paintings seemed simple, but a careful look could perceive something uncomfortable in this apparent simplicity. The arrangement of the shapes, too close to each other or to the edges of the canvas, the intense chromatic relations between the colors of the figures and the background, and the paint that exceeded the limited area of the figures, revealed a questioning in relation to the tradition of geometric abstraction. His works allude to graphic signals, which are present in the urban environment, although deprived of content and messages.
Source: RODRIGO Andrade. In: ENCICLOPÉDIA Itaú Cultural de Arte e Cultura Brasileiras. São Paulo: Itaú Cultural, 2021. Available at: <http://enciclopedia.itaucultural.org.br/pessoa1963/rodrigo-andrade>. Accessed on: June 8, 2021. Encyclopedia entry. ISBN: 978-85-7979-060-7