Still Life

“By around 1956 or ’57, Iberê already had a reputation as a printmaker. It was at that moment, in four still-lifes, that he submitted a few objects and pieces of fruit to extraordinary geometrization. These etchings, together with their respective working proofs, form a group which suggests proximities with the still-lifes of Morandi. He had been familiar with the work of the great Italian artist since 1948. His stay in Rome had coincided with the exhibition of 88 Morandi etchings organised by Petrucci at the Calcografia Nazionale, which led to the Bolognese artist’s becoming known as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, evidenced by important exhibitions in Brussels, London, Paris and the 2nd São Paulo Biennial, where he was awarded the Grand Prize for Printmaking. Iberê created a succession of prints and paintings in dialogue with Morandi’s work, in which everyday objects are presented with such solemnity that they seem more like objects from some secular liturgy. The emotive density emanating from these arrangements puts them in the same lineage as Morandi’s simple yet enigmatic natura in posa.
[...] The fact that they shared some common principles did not mean that the younger artist owed any debt to the older one. By personal temperament and choice, the only commitment he recognised was to sensibility itself. The important thing to note is that Iberê’s proximity to the aesthetics of Morandi in his still-life phase reveals the most characteristic element of his work: the dialectic between the sensory and the intellectual.”
Maria Alice Milliet, O “outro” na pintura de Iberê Camargo( Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê Camargo, 2012), 123.

“The painting (accession number P071) of 1956 provides full expression of the successful achievements tested in the previous works: it is a painting in which the formal rigour of the composition goes hand-in-hand with pictorial simplification. Synthetic, hieratic forms are carefully arranged on a base (a table perhaps) with a screen backdrop completed by a broad, lighter square. The reduced palette unfolds into sombre tones of grey, blue and brown, all very composed and well orchestrated. This exercise is clearly a tribute to the still lifes of the Italian master of economy and simplicity, Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964). There is a clear intention of moving beyond representation: this is a painting, forms arranged on a canvas, with a metaphysical aspiration, as if the depicted objects are able to convey more than their appearance. [...]”
Paulo Gomes, Iberê e seu ateliê: as coisas, as pessoas e os lugares (Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê Camargo, 2015), 149.

“The unsteadiness of Iberê’s early paintings from the 40s expands differently in the larger canvases of the following decades. His still life and bottle paintings towards the late 1950s deal with formal problems. Investigations into the structural nature of objects, complex compositional aspects, the systematic study of chromatic connections between light and shade are striking procedures. This is obsessive research, repeating themes and frameworks, with solutions changing through development, but retaining expressive organisation. Kandinsky also stressed the inner element, the subjective substance contained in an objective cover.”
Mônica Zielinsky, "A inquietude da arte," in Mônica Zielinsky, Paulo Sergio Duarte and Sônia Salztein, Moderno no limite (Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê Camargo, 2008), 119.