Tocata e Fuga, Poemas Abstratos : Felipe Ehrenberg

Tocata e Fuga – Abstract Poems, an individual exhibition by the Mexican artist Felipe Ehrenberg, marks the farewell of Brazil for one of the most important contemporary artists in Latin America. The artist came to Brazil in 2001 after being appointed as Mexico’s cultural attaché, and now, 13 years later, he is returning to that country.

The title of the exhibition, in Italian, alludes to the musical context: a fugue is a contrapuntal, polyphonic, and imitative style of composition based on a principal theme, with its origins in Baroque music. In musical composition, the theme is repeated by other voices that enter successively and continue in an interwoven manner; the toccata, also Baroque, typically emphasizes the performer’s virtuosity. This is the first time that the artist has worked in abstraction in his long artistic career, and the current series has been developed on the eve of his move to Mexico. The collection of works mixes techniques typical of the 16th and 17th centuries, including watercolor, charcoal, sanguine, and some collages.

Ehrenberg was born in Tlacopac, Mexico, in 1943, and became a painter, sculptor, and printmaker under the tutelage of masters such as Matthías Goeritz and José Chávez Morado. Artist, chronicler, archivist, professor, politician, diplomat, editor, actor, organizer, tireless traveler – he is a neologist: a living work of art. Founder of the prestigious Beau Geste Press and a co-participant in the Fluxus movement during his stay in England (1968–1976), the artist deals with essential issues of postmodernity related to the construction of national identity. He questions the bureaucratic and institutional information system and, above all, the image of his own country