Adriana Varejão

Private Collection, Puerto Rico

Silviano Santiago, Adriana Varejão entre carnes e mares, Rio de Janeiro 2009, p. 36, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition overall. The canvas is unlined. The surface texture irregularities and areas of craquelure are intended and consistent with the artist’s working method and choice of medium. There is evidence of very light dust accumulation on the surface. There are a few very minor areas where the heavy impasto has been slightly flattened. Under very close inspection, there is evidence of minor unobtrusive soiling to the canvas and light wear and handling to the turning edges and corners. Unframed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Since first appearing on the international stage in the early 1990s, Adriana Varejão has consolidated her position as a leading force of contemporary Brazilian art. Recently honored with her first solo museum show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and a 2012 retrospective at The Modern Art Museum in São Paulo, Adriana Varejão, represent alongside Beatriz Milhazes, Ernesto Neto, and Vik Muniz, the first generation of Brazilian artists to have attained international acclaim.

Mining artifice and sensuality with 17th and 18th century historical references, Varejão's work annihilates any attempt at formal analysis. Her approach to art making embodies radical experimentation and a profoundly personal reading of cultural cannibalism or anthropophagy. A term first coined in the 1920s by Brazilian modernist poet Oswald de Andrade in his "Anthropophagist Manifesto,” anthropophagy served to “cannibalize” the cultural contribution of European colonizers, consuming, mutilating and ultimately transforming it to create an authentic Brazilian culture--one better suited for the modern era. 

Varejão's ongoing courtship with the Baroque-arguably the most original and poignant quality in her work-grounds her painting in European tradition. Like Rembrandt, Soutine, and Bacon before her, Varejão's fascination with flesh permeates her work with a visceral condition absent in the work of her contemporaries. 

Executed in 1991 at the onset of her career, Gêmea (Twin) explores the materiality of paint through the lense of self-portraiture; a recurrent theme recently reexamined by Varejão in the 2014 Polvo Portraits. As an early expression of her artistic persona, Gêmea inaugurates a career long investigation into the politics of colonialism and miscegenation in her native Brazil. Exquisitely textural and introspective, the present work confirms Varejão's incomparable and theatrical artistry.