Alex Cerveny

Alex Cerveny (1963) is a Brazilian artist, engraver, sculptor, illustrator and painter, born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1963.

Cerveny studied painting and drawing with Valdir Sarubbi and etching with Selma Daffré, two Brazilian masters.

In 1988, he started working with Paulo Figueiredo gallery, a partnership that resulted in solo exhibitions in 1988, 1990 and 1993.

He participated in the 21st São Paulo Art Biennial (Bienal de São Paulo), in 1991, and won the Prize “Secretaria de Cultura” awarded by the state government of São Paulo. In the same year, he had his first international exhibition, “Viva Brasil Viva,” in Liljevalchs konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden.

In 1987, 1990 and 1995, he participated in the exhibition “Panorama da Arte Brasileira” (“Brazilian Art Panorama”), organized by the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art - MAM, winning, in the 1995 edition, the “Price Waterhouse do Brasil” Award, with the work “Excelsior.”

In 1993, he was invited to attend a workshop at the Tamarind Institute, a division of the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, United States. At the Institute, he was able to perfect his lithography and printing techniques. He visited Tamarind Institute again in 2012, this time as a guest and to work on new prints.

In 2005, he participated in the multidisciplinary project called “Nasca Projekt,” in collaboration with the Department of Geosciences of the Dresden University of Applied Sciences (de). Led by Dr. Bernd Teichert, it included members of the Maria Reiche Association and Christoph Rust, from Germany. The group made three expeditions to Ica province, in Peru, and from there explored the Nazca lines, geoglyphs made between 200 BC and 800 AD by the Paracas culture and Nazca culture. These trips resulted in the project called “Nasca Correspondences, with works from Cerveny and Rust and that were shown in many exhibitions. One of them was organized in August 2008 by Galeria Marta Traba, at the Latin American Memorial, in São Paulo, and another was held at the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim, in Hildesheim, Germany, in 2009.

In 2012 he participated in the Trienal of San Juan, Puerto Rico, featuring the drawings from “Nasca Correspondences,” which were this time turned into handmade embroidery. These drawings-embroideries were made in collaboration with embroiders Maria Elita Alves Borges and Ana Claudia Bento dos Santos, mothers who graduated from the ACTC (Associação de Assistência à Criança e ao Adolescente Cardíacos e aos Transplantados do Coração—Association for Children and Adolescents with Heart Disease or Heart Transplant), which is based in São Paulo, Brazil.

In 2013 he was invited to participate in the 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana.

Since 2001 his work is represented by Casa Triângulo art gallery in São Paulo, Brazil.

The technical precision is a common denominator in the work of Alex Cerveny. He is not stuck to one single technique or material: drawings, sculptures, paintings, embroidery, collage, ceramics, photographs and prints, are all present in his work.

As a theme, he utilizes historical references, “some of them biographical, as the ellastic and twisted characters – memories from his circus artist experience; other literary, and others, still, from mass media, creating an intriguing alegory.” (Bienal Naïfs, 2010).

He values the process and the dialogue among his artworks. As summarized by the artist, “I feel more a writer who writes images, more a writer than an artist. The tradition that I appreciate in art is that of telling stories, as altarpieces, as Assyrian walls that tell stories of battles...”

Alexandro Júlio de Oliveira Cerveny was born in São Paulo in 1963. His parents, an architect and a teacher specialized in teaching for the blind, were the first responsible for his interest in the arts. The father, by showing and providing him with various materials to express himself through drawing, and the mother, by teaching him that people could have different ways of looking at and observing the world around them.

He began his studies in a school of experimental methods (Grupo Escolar e Ginásio Experimental Dr. Edmundo de Carvalho), in the Lapa neighborhood, that stood out in the pedagogical field thanks to the participation of educators and researchers such as Terezinha Fran, Diva F. Sgueglia, Ana Maria Popovic, among others. The school provided an openness to ideas and to the arts for children at an early age.

ARTISTIC TRAINING

In the 1970s, Alex met Valdir Sarubbi, at the time, his theater teacher at the experimental school. As an educator, Sarubbi incentivated his students to enjoy the library and music collection that he kept in his studio so that the students would develop a taste for literature and music.

With Sarubbi, Alex learned that art – drawing, sculpture, theater – must express the inner perception of each individual. The mentor used to say that “the important thing is not the artist’s engagement within the trend or specific art movements, but an open vision of those who look at the work to enjoy it in what the art presents as sensitive, be that whatever shape it takes” (BITTAR, 2002). This idea was significant for the formation of Alex Cerveny.

When Alex was 14 years old, he got a temporary job in Nelson Leirner’s factory studio. Despite having been there only for a brief period, that was his first contact with contemporary art.

Another field that was also very valuable to the themes of his eventual artworks was his approximation to the circus. He was a student at Piolim Circus Academy and Picadeiro School. There, he developed a character, Ellastic Elvis, who did presentations of acrobatic contortionism.

In the 1980s, Sarubbi noted the interest that the graphics by Saint-Clair Cemin, Ubirajara Ribeiro, Evandro Carlos Jardim, among others, sparked in his student, now assistant. Guided by his mentor, Alex Cerveny started attending the print workshop of Selma Daffré. There, in addition to working as an apprentice, he was a printer, and, later, taught print making. Since then, he has merged his artistic activities with the teaching of drawing, painting and etching techniques.

ARTISTIC ACTIVITIES

Since the 1980s, drawing and print making have been constant activities for Alex Cerveny. In 1983, Sarubbi took Alex to produce his first solo exhibition at Gileno Müller Chaves’s Elf Galeria de Arte, in Belém do Pará. In 1987, Julio Louzada’s Galeria Unidade Dois, in São Paulo, prepared his other solo exhibition – Desenhos. This show prioritized Cerveny’s introspective search. From then on, it became clear that his production was focused on an intimate imagery, rich in personal mythologies, a reaction to the gigantism of artworks that, from the 1983 and 1985 biennials, and in the artist’s own words, “bet in large formats and in the dissolving of identities.” (REZENDE, 2012)

In 1988, Alex started to work with the gallery owner Paulo Figueiredo, a partnership that resulted in solo exhibitions in 1988, 1990 and 1993.

The artist was invited to participate in the 21ª Bienal de São Paulo, in 1991, and was awarded the Prêmio Secretaria da Cultura by the state of São Paulo. In the same year, his first international exhibition, Viva Brasil Viva was organized in Liljevalchs Kunsthall, in Stockholm where, among other things, gallerist Ruta Correa, from Freiburg, Germany, first encountered the artist’s work.

Still in the 1990s, through Ruta Correa and Joel Edelstein, Cerveny was invited to participate in contemporary art fairs in Chicago, Frankfurt, Madrid, Paris and Miami and several solo exhibitions in places such as Galerie 20x2 in Arnhem, Holland, Ledis Flam Gallery, in New York, as well as the exhibition Ouvres sur papier, in the Brazilian Embassy in Paris.

In 1987, 1990 and 1995, he participated in the exhibition Panorama da Arte Brasileira, organized by Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo winning, in the 1995 edition, the Price Waterhouse do Brasil award, with the work, Excelsior.

In 1993, Alex Cerveny was invited to participate in an workshop at the Tamarind Institute, a division of the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, USA. In this institute, that offers education and studio programs for professional artists, Alex could perfect his lithography work and his printing techniques. He returned to the Tamarind Institute in 2012, this time, as an invited guest to make new prints that were then included in the institution’s collection.

Between 1996 and 1999, he worked and exhibited at Valu Oria Galeria de Arte. As of 2001, Ricardo Trevisan’s Galeria Casa Triângulo, represents him.

In 2008, Cerveny received an invitation to participate in a multidisciplinary project together with the Geosciences department of the University of Dresden. Led by Dr. Bernd Teichert, members of the Maria Reiche Association and, among others, German artist Christoph Rust and Alex Cerveny, were invited to be part of the Nazca Projekt. There were three expeditions to the Peruvian province of Ica, south of Lima, and from there, they would meet and explore the geoglyphs created between 200 b.C. to 800 a.d. by the Paracas and Nazca cultures. The result of these trips gave origin to the project Nasca Correspondences between the two artists that has led to several exhibitions. Among them, one in São Paulo, organized by Galeria Marta Traba, at the Memorial da América Latina in August 2008 and another at the Roemer und Pelizaeus Museum, in Hildesheim, Germany, in 2009. This museum holds one of the biggest and most notable collections of Peruvian art in the world. Hence its interest in presenting the vision of contemporary artists concerning the Nasca lines.

In 2010, Alex Cerveny participated in the Bienal Naïfs, at SESC de Piracicaba, São Paulo, curated by Maria Alice Milliet. The exhibition was organized “around the emerging artists’ dialogue – participants of Bienal Naïfs’ previous editions – and artists with established careers in the strict circle of galleries and museums. (Bienal Naïfs, 2010, pg. 14). A special room was set up for presenting the works of invited artists, among them, Antonio Henrique Amaral, Vânia Mignone and José Bezerra.

In September of the same year, at the Paralela 2010 show, Cerveny exhibited forty drawings – Psico Gráficos – made in an artist’s residence in Vienna. The artwork has been acquired by SESC and is permanently on view in the Santo Amaro building.

Alex has also participated in the Trienal Poli/gráfica de San Juan, in Puerto Rico, in 2012, featuring the drawings of the Nasca Correspondences that, this time, were transformed into handmade embroidery. These designs-embroidery were a tribute to the textile legacy that the Paracas and Nazca cultures left. Maria Elita Alves Borges and Ana Claudia Bento dos Santos, were embroiderers from the group of mothers formed by ACTC that collaborated on this project.

Still in 2012, Alex Cerveny was invited by Fundação Iberê Camargo, in Porto Alegre, to produce, in the southern artist’s studio, a print that is now part of the institution’s collection. In the same year, he was one of the artists selected for the commemorative exhibition Gravura brasileira no acervo da Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo: 100 anos de história, at Estação Pinacoteca, São Paulo.

ILLUSTRATOR

His work as an illustrator is extensive. He maintained a long lasting partnership with journalist Barbara Gancia, illustrating her column in the newspaper Folha de São Paulo.

As far as books, he illustrated Vejam como sei escrever, by José Paulo Paes, published by Ática in 2001 and Pindorama, by Sandra Peres and Luiz Tatit, published by Cosac Naify in 2003.

For the book, The Adventures of Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi, published by Cosac Naify in 2012, Alex Cerveny researched and recovered a printing technique used in the 19th century – contemporary to Collodi’s original text - the cliché verre. For this technique, one burns a glass plate with a candle and draws on the surface with a needle-like object. The glass then, functions as a negative, allowing the impression of the design on photographic paper.

His drawings as illustrations were gathered in 2005 in the Desenhos de Ilustração exhibition at Estação Pinacoteca, in São Paulo.

THE ART-EDUCATOR

The beginning of his involvement with education was in Sarubbi and Selma Daffré’s studio, when he taught drawing and engraving. Since then, has always been involved in educational programs.

In 1984, Alex Cerveny taught metal engraving technique at Paço das Artes, in São Paulo. In the following years, he coordinated Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo’s print studio, and also taught at Oficinas Culturais Oswald de Andrade.

With a partnership between Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, Cedac (Centro de Educação e Documentação para Ação Comunitária), and ministries of education of various brazilian states, Cerveny participated in the Escola que Vale program, offering 8 years of art workshops for children and for professionals of the public education system in Pará, Maranhão, Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo.

His work as an art-educator spans several institutions such as Instituto Tomie Ohtake, ACTC (Associação de Assistência à Criança e ao Adolescente Cardíacos Transplantados do Coração), Colégio Logos, Senac and Escola São Paulo.
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