Study for the series Ciclistas (Cyclists)

“[...] The omnipresence of the theme of the bicycle wheel could of course appear to be a critical reappraisal of Marcel Duchamp’s Roue de bicyclette (Bicycle Wheel). The master of the avant-garde had turned this wheel into a simple readymade, an object withdrawn from the everyday world, following the theory of the artist, in order for it to become an art object within the abstract space of the museum. Camargo, by contrast, resituates the mythical wheel within an everyday setting. So doing, he restores to it a value both human and painterly. This is his own way of rethinking the allegory of return in De Chirico’s The Prodigal Son: as against Duchamp’s airy irony, Camargo stakes his preference for earthly tragedy.”
Jacques Leenhardt, Iberê Camargo: os meandros da memória (Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê Camargo, 2010), 109.