Maria Polo graduated from the Istituto d’Arte di Venezia in 1955. She moved to Rome before settling in Rio de Janeiro in 1962, when abstraction and objecthood were foremost concerns for local avant- garde groups. Untitled (1962) belongs to the series that Maria Polo presented at the eleventh Modern Art Salon in Rio de Janeiro. The painting combines dense and fragmented forms that appear to have exploded against a grey background. Luminous gaps compete with irregular geometries in sanguine and black tones, at times aligned with the edge of the canvas, at times thrown against its limits. Later, Polo developed increasingly colourful abstractions, combining circles with irregular shapes that defy their hardness (1970–1983). Polo’s work evokes the movement and transformation she experienced as a migrant and the condition of being a foreigner in different cities (Venice, Rome, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro). Her brand of abstraction stood apart from the geometric tendencies that characterised avant- garde production in São Paulo and Rio. Instead, her brushstrokes evoke Expressionism and her impasto nods to the materiality of Informalism.
This is the first time the work of Maria Polo is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Luiza Interlenghi
