Artist Abelardo Zaluar, Geometric Abstract Painting

Biography:
Abelardo Zaluar (Niterói RJ 1924 – Rio de Janeiro RJ 1987). Painter, draftsman, engraver, teacher. Between 1944 and 1948, he attended classes at the National School of Fine Arts (Enba), in Rio de Janeiro. In the same decade, he created, with other colleagues, the Escolinha de Arte do Brasil, becoming the technical director of the Rio institution. In 1959, he won first place in the drawing of the Leirner Prize for Contemporary Art, at the Galeria das Artes das Folhas, in São Paulo. In 1967, he won the acquisition prize at the 4th Modern Art Salon in the Federal District and an honorable mention at the 1st Ibero-American Painting Biennial, in Mexico City, in 1978. He participates in several group exhibitions between 1959 and 1987, such as the International Biennial of São Paulo, the Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM / SP), and the National Salon of Modern Art (SNAM), in Rio de Janeiro, from which he receives a trip abroad award in 1963 In 1975 and 1979 he exhibited in retrospectives at MAM / SP and at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Paraná (MAC / PR), respectively. The following year he presents works in yet another retrospective, this time at the Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art (Margs). He is a member of selection and award commissions for salons, such as the 7th National Salon of Plastic Arts, in 1984, at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (MAM / RJ). In the 1980s, he received the title of professor emeritus at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).

Critical Commentary
In the beginning, in the 1940s and 1950s, Zaluar works with watercolors and figurative drawings, moving to an abstract-geometric poetics in the same period. Since then, he has shown interest in formal relations and between areas of color and a “constant concern for balance, weight and balance”, as noted by critic Mário Pedrosa (1900-1981) 1. In certain works of the 1960s, Zaluar even interferes directly on the plane of the canvas, creating as if it fits and detaches sections of the plane (SEM Título, 1965). Later, he still works in this way with collages, as in Vasados ??em Azul (1970).