This is an interview conducted by the artist Luiz Paulo Baravelli with the painter Leda Catunda, who comments on two painting trends in São Paulo in the 1980s: subject and figure. She talks about her approach to art of the prior decade and cites the recent work of Kenny Scharf as an influence. Catunda even mentions the differences between the two generations (1970s and 1980s) with respect to Pop art, both in their discovery of mass culture and in the “appropriative” element of their work process. She also talks about the positions of the two generations vis-à-vis tradition and her own reading of Postmodernism.  

Leda Catunda (b. 1961) began to be known on the Brazilian art scene in the 1980s, in the context of the group known as “Geração 80” and in the resulting “return to painting” that came to characterize that generation.

Luiz Paulo Baravelli (b. 1942) began in art in the 1960s, in São Paulo, as a member of the Grupo Rex. This group was formed in 1966 by the Brazilian artists Wesley Duke Lee (1931–2010), Geraldo de Barros (1923–98), Nelson Leirner (b. 1932), Carlos Fajardo (b. 1941), Frederico Nasser (b. 1942), and Baravelli himself. The group took controversial positions within the art scene and teamed up with a gallery (Rex Gallery & Sons) and produced a newsletter, Rex Time. In the 1970s, a group including José Resende, Nasser, Fajardo, and Baravelli, established the Escola Brasil, an institution of learning that proposed a new model of art education. Therefore, in addition to being an artist, Baravelli achieved recognition through his work as a professor.

Regarding the 1980s generation in Brazil, there is the catalogue of the exhibition Como vai você, Geração 80? (July 1984) by Jorge Guinle Filho and a book by Roberto Pontual, Explode Geração (Rio de Janeiro: Avenir, 1984). Pontual’s book seeks to set forth his personal outlook (and literary perspective) from the heart of the art scene in 1980s Brazil, and includes artists such as Mónica Nador and Ana Tavares in São Paulo as well as Leda Catunda, Sérgio Romagnolo, and Beatriz Milhazes in Rio. For additional information, see Pontual’s manifesto, through which he identifies with that generation in “Semana nacional de poesia de vanguarda: comunicado e conclusões” [1110501]. Frederico Morais wrote an article about the exhibition, in general terms, under the title “Como vai você, geração 80? (Sinto-me como uma star, no palco, investindo no prazer)” [1111355]. Subsequently, Morais wrote about Leonilson, one of the most outstanding artists of that generation, in “Leonilson: a Geração 80 ficou para trás” [1110961], and about the return to painting in the eighties in “Gosto deste cheiro de pintura” [1110992].