Artists

Waldemar Cordeiro

Press release

The Mayor Gallery presents the first solo exhibition in Europe of visionary Brazilian artist, Waldemar Cordeiro (b. 1925 Rome, Italy – d. 1973 São Paulo, Brazil). Fifteen works, many of which have never been shown outside Brazil, form the basis of this exhibition in which different phases of Cordeiro’s intensive production from the late 1940s to his early death in 1973 are brought into new curatorial focus.

Regarded as the greatest of Brazil’s exponents of concrete art in the 1950s, Cordeiro was an original and visionary practitioner and theorist, who brought both these domains together in an astonishingly productive oeuvre. This exhibition is being held at a time when Cordeiro’s significance is increasingly being recognised on the international stage. He is, for example, among the invited artists in this year’s Venice Biennale, opening shortly before The Mayor Gallery’s exhibition. 

Cordeiro’s works are also held in major museum and private collections internationally, including the Cisneros Collection (CPPC), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, MoMA, New York, Reina Sofia, Madrid, Museum of Contemporary Art, São Paulo and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.