Tadeu Chiarelli, curator and current director of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, has been active as a researcher and curator in the fields of photography and nineteenth- and twentieth-century Brazilian art. His work has shown how art and photography are linked to the art world and its sphere, emphasizing an interest in social events. He played a key role in promoting photography as a fundamental medium in Brazilian art in recent decades.
This essay was written as the introduction to Imagens de Segunda Geração, an exhibition organized by the MAC-USP (Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo) in 1987 and curated by Chiarelli. The exhibition was important because it was an attempt to bring together Brazilian artists from the 1980s to address a common theme: the quoting and appropriating of images, which was a fundamental aspect of his art criticism. The selection is based on an earlier research project⸺focused on emerging art in the city of São Paulo⸺which was conducted by the IDART (Departamento de Informação e Documentação Artística), an agency that was created in 1975 and was subsequently folded into the Centro Cultural São Paulo.
[See these articles by Tadeu Chiarelli in the ICAA digital archive: “15 artistas brasileiros: colocando dobradiças na arte contemporânea” (doc. no. 1110500); “Amanhã hoje: Casa triângulo de 1988 a 1995” (doc. no. 1111344); “Apontamentos para um mapa das artes plásticas em São Paulo durante 1985” (doc. no. 1111351); “Apropriações: o lugar da arte como questão” (doc. no. 1111252); “Armadilhas para Narciso” (doc. no. 1111253); “Da arte nacional brasileira para a arte brasileira internacional” (doc. no. 1075144); “Emmanuel Nassar: erudito e popular” (doc. no. 1110457); “Fotografía en Brasil: años 90 = Photography in Brazil in the 1990s” (doc. no. 1110894); “A gravura no espelho” (doc. no. 1111250); “A gravura paulista significa” (doc. no. 1111251); “Jac Leirner” (doc. no. 1111254); “La mirada contaminada: otras fotografias = The contaminated gaze: other photographies” (doc. no. 1110893); “Realidade e simulacro” (doc. no. 1111255); “Uma realidade... dilacerante: a produção de Nazareth Pacheco = Nazareth Pacheco’s output: a lacerating reality” (doc. no. 1111059); “Sobre a fotografia brasileira atual = On current Brazilian photography” (doc. no. 1110895); “Sobre as pinturas de Mônica Nador” (doc. no. 1111256); and “O tridimensional na arte brasileira dos anos 80 e 90: genealogias, superações” (doc. no. 1111352)].