Raul Leal

Raul Leal had his artistic training at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro, his production transits between mediums such as painting, drawing and photography. The artist is interested in the connection between images of different origins that allow a flow and superposition of meanings. His current work deals with an imaginary referring to the landscape of the Brazilian interior and the elements that compose this environment.

This poetics deals with the disappearance of a landscape that was for centuries a symbolic presence in the process of formation of national identity. All Brazilian artistic production, including modernism, refers at some point to the forests, rivers and natural wealth of Brazil. It is essential to stress that aesthetic experience has always played a predominant role in our knowledge of the natural world, through drawings, watercolours, paintings, literature and poetry. These crossings, while forming an imaginary of an eternally green Brazil, have created a distance from the reality of our interior, which remains ignored. Nowadays we live in a predominantly urban society which ignores the problematic circumstances of the interior, such as desertification, the extinction of species and the degradation of water resources. The artist's proposal is to look at situations that are outside this urban axis, where a succession of events has been developing in an alarming way

It is interesting to note that the process of constructing these images reflects the practice of travelling artists in their documentation of the Brazilian landscape, these artists worked by combining aesthetic experience with the recognition and configuration of the natural world. Coming from several trips to the interior, the works by Raul Leal that resulted from this experience exist in a context that, in a way, inverts the logic of this traditional imagery of representing the natural, since degradation is what is found in most of the territories visited.

The artist's works are part of the collections of institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, IBEU Collection, National Library, Federal University of Espírito Santo, Museum of Contemporary Art of Blumenau, among others. 

Por: Raul Leal