In Brazil, naive artists pay tribute to Rio 2016 Olympic Games

For the first time since its inauguration, in 1995, the International Naive Art Museum of Brazil (MIAN), in southern Rio de Janeiro, had its exhibition area revamped. The renovation aimed at preparing the space for housing the temporary Jogando com as Cores Naïf exhibit (“playing with naive colours,” in a literal translation), which will feature works that pay homage to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. MIAN is regarded as Latin America's most prominent museum dedicated to this style of painting.

Combining art and sports, the exhibit features some 160 works by 30 Brazilian artists from across the country. Some of them have been displayed at the Olympic Museum, in Lausanne, Switzerland. Others were specially created for the exhibit, on the same theme—the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The canvases portray different sport disciplines and also countries that have hosted the Olympics. One of the panels, commissioned to artist Mabel, tells the modern history of the Games ever since Athens, in 1896, all the way to its latest editions—all in comics form.

“These works bring together culture, sports, and education, reinforcing the Olympic ideal of balance between body, mind, and will,” curator Jacqueline Finkelstein explains. The pieces were grouped under six categories: Brazilian sports, outdoor sports, water sports, court sports, winter sports, and miscellaneous.

Among the highlights of the exhibit is Largada da Maratona, the work by Fábio Sombra, from Rio, that took the colors and shapes of Brazilian naive art to the museum of Lausanne. Interactivity is also part of the experience, as visitors may portray themselves playing their favorite sport on a huge black board, with a relief of the city of Rio de Janeiro.

In art, the term naive refers to the style of painting adopted by people with no formal artistic education who nonetheless overcome technical difficulties by using a unique language to create works of great beauty. Art historians also refer to the style, joined by thousands of people throughout the world, as modern primitivism.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira