University of São Paulo: São Paulo in the art of master Evandro Carlos Jardim
These are engravings that change over time, over the seasons. And they reveal the buildings, nature, movement and people of São Paulo in backlight. In the exhibition Neblina , artist and master Evandro Carlos Jardim, from the School of Communications and Arts (ECA) at USP, tells about the city where he was born and where he lives in 50 prints. These are images that reveal his reflections, teach and encourage, for six decades, new artists who take the lessons of the master around the world in different techniques, styles and languages.
Curated by Paulo Miyada and Diego Mauro, from the Research and Curatorship Center at Instituto Tomie Ohtake, the prints date from 1980 to the present day. They are organized into two rooms, which present the series Figuras Jacentes and Tamanduateí Contraluz . There is also a third room, where the visitor can watch a video in which the teacher and artist tells his story and thoughts about the art of engraving. “Evandro Carlos Jardim adopted engraving or did engraving adopt the artist?”, question Miyada and Mauro in the introductory text.
What is certain is that the visitor has a subtle encounter in Neblina . Far beyond what the eyes see in print. “The only problem is the singularity of the word engraving, which does not do justice to the multiplicity of this medium, its infinite capacity for transformation and nuance, to which this artist dedicates himself with special persistence, with his ‘sympathy for a doing’” , comment the curators, both with a master’s degree from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU) at USP.
Garden’s definition, “sympathy for a doing”, may seem simple. A simplicity that translates into mastery of technique, freedom of form , which invents and reinvents. It creates and recreates in the infinity of art and thought.
“ There are several temporalities together in the same work. There are images from 1967, 1980, 2020, to the present day, which are revisited by the artist, translating time and changes.”
Instituto Tomie Ohtake, even during the week, is busy. Students from schools in various regions of the city visit Evandro Jardim. Attentive, observe the images.
“They look the same, but they are very different,” observes Janice Freitas, 16, a student at Colégio Castro Alves. “I want to be a design, an artist… a profession that leads me to imagine and create.” She observes the images of Tamanduateí Contraluz. She interprets: “For the artist, Neblina is a woman. A figure present as white, black, seems to fly. The fog is just like that. It blurs our eyes and we see a new reality.”
Janice’s mother was a Garden student at Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (Faap), in São Paulo. “My daughter has heard me talk about Jardim since she was a little girl”, says Fabiana Ferreira Freitas . “It leaves students free to reflect and create.”
Curator Diego Mauro follows the Jornal da USP report on the exhibition. And he highlights the subtleties that make the difference between one work and another, stimulating the public eye. “There are several temporalities together in the same work. There are images from 1967, 1980, 2020, to the present day, which are revisited by the artist translating time and changes,” he comments. “But each print is unique.”
Garden art always has a void to be filled. Like the city itself. The curators brought the series Tamanduateí Contraluz, which represents in dozens of images the restlessness of everyday life under the passage of time.
“The images of this set were constructed from the same copper matrix, on which the artist once designed the Palácio das Indústrias and the support pillar of a viaduct, as seen from the banks of the Tamanduateí River”, he explains. Mauro. “From this first trace, Jardim operated engraving as a kind of reverse side of archeology, as an excavation practice that, instead of revealing a fact of the past, produces infinite new traces.”
“I believe that every human being has, in principle, empathy for something. Vocation is an interior call that depends on effort, fidelity, dedication.”
The 87 years of the artist and master are told in the history of Brazilian printmaking. And printed in the professor’s daily life at USP, Faap, Escola de Belas Artes and in the engraving workshops at Sesc.
“When nature meets a teacher artist”
“When I started teaching, I reflected a lot on what in the nature of art imposes itself. What to prioritize in the art discipline? I especially thought about the importance of freedom of expression. If you don’t feel free, it’s impossible to create,” she explains. “Art is the need to express a feeling. I never asked a student to hand in what they had already done or what they learned, studied. This requirement might seem like a prerequisite for attending classes. I do not do this. I talk to the student and ask what he is feeling the need to do. And he feels free to let his artistic expression flow naturally.”
The nature of Jardim’s art formed artists and artist teachers. “I believe that every human being has, in principle, empathy for something. Vocation is an interior call that depends on effort, fidelity, dedication.”