Study for Phantasmagoria IV

"The effective return of landscape into Iberê’s work will occur in his compositions of the 1980s. These are pictures with fully defined figure and ground, and a high degree of complexity in their conception and development. Two studies (accession numbers D1025 and D2094) from this period provide good examples of the function of landscape in his work at this time: Study for Phantasmagoria IV is an intricate web of information, suggesting more than simple description of the landscape and producing a biting, tortuous drawing. The second drawing, with no record of further development, is more defined: trees and background are distinct, allowing immersion in the world of landscape and in the work itself, considering the wealth of material used and its thick, velvety application.
Although there is an effective return to landscape during this period, it is not the same as the topographical landscapes of the 1940s or even those nostalgic pictures of the 1970s. Here the landscape has a new function, even when it retains features that can identify places: these are pictures about being in the world and not in a place, or locus, representations of states of mind, ideas about places, but mainly depictions of other internal places: 'the landscapes in Iberê’s paintings of the 1990s seem to be created from within. From inside the painter himself, inside the human bodies in the pictures; as if they were created to fit them'. [...]"
Paulo Gomes, Iberê e seu ateliê: as coisas, as pessoas e os lugares (Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê Camargo, 2015), 158.