Wanda Pimentel, the Brazilian painter whose work referenced Pop and surrealism, has died. She is best known for her Envolvimentos series, in which the paintings, primarily in blocky colour fields of green and red, feature female feet and legs, but never the rest of the body, against a domestic backdrop. Made 1968–84, the work was a response to the patriarchy and misogyny of Brazil’s military dictatorship. One untitled painting from 1979 is typical, depicting a pair of elegant bare female legs striding across a kitchen surface strewn with dirty crockery. The figure also seems oblivious to the kettle on the stove as it overflows.
Rio de Janeiro-based, Pimentel studied at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-RJ) in 1965 with the artist Ivan Serpa, one of the founders of the constructivist Grupo Frente. There she also met Raymundo Colares, Antonio Manuel and Cildo Meireles. In the 1990s she moved away from the vivid palette to work in black and white for the series Invólucros (Capsules) and Linhas (Lines), the latter featuring ladders stretched across the canvas. The Animais (Animals, 2000s) series premiered at a solo show at MAM Rio de Janeiro and featured beetles, flies, snakes and other commonly disliked creatures. In the final twenty years of her life Pimentel experimented in sculpture with Memórias (Memories), acrylic boxes housing objects related to the artist’s personal history.
A 2017 retrospective at MASP in São Paulo increased her international visibility, as well as her inclusion in the touring survey Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 which opened at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, in 2018.
27 December 2019
