Willys de Castro

Willys de Castro (Uberlândia, 1926 - São Paulo, 1988)

Willys de Castro was a Brazilian painter, printmaker, draftsman, set designer, costume designer, graphic artist, and visual artist associated with the Concreto and Neo-Concreto movements. He worked across painting, printmaking, drawing, scenography, costume design, and graphic arts, exploring relationships between form, color, space, and time. Through these investigations, he embraced a reinterpretation of the visual language of Mondrian and Malevich—Suprematism, geometric abstraction, monochromy, and spatial movements[1]—as well as the Russian avant-garde and the Dutch "Stijl" artists, later further developed in certain directions by Max Bill—the leading figure of the Swiss School—and the Ulm Group[2].

1941: In São Paulo, he studied drawing with André Fort. Between 1944 and 1949, he worked as a technical draftsman and earned a degree in Chemistry.

1950: He began an internship in graphic arts and produced his first abstract-geometric paintings and drawings, or geometric research characterized by mathematical rigor combined with simplification of form[3]. This led him to create works with a constructivist approach (circa 1953), bringing him closer to the three-dimensional reliefs of Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953), whose artistic expression would later be co-opted by the socialist realism promoted under Josef Stalin. Other key references included: (1) Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1914) in 1911, Germany; (2) De Stijl, founded in 1917, uniting Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) around abstract research; and (3) Suprematism, founded in 1915 by Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935) in Russia.

Clearly, understanding Wyllis's artistic production requires familiarity with movements such as Suprematism, Neoplasticism—geometric abstract painting composed of black horizontal and vertical lines on a white background, often combined with colored blocks in primary colors 'red, blue, and yellow', typical of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)—Constructivism, and Concretism, led in São Paulo in the 1950s by Waldemar Cordeiro[4]. These approaches aimed at an abstract form of art devoid of representation or symbolic content, which could be described as:

"The developmentalist context of belief in industry and progress sets the tone for the era in which the adherents of concrete art in Brazil would operate. The concrete program stems from a convergence between artistic and industrial work. Any lyrical or symbolic connotation is removed from art. The painting, constructed solely from plastic elements—planes and colors—has no other meaning than itself."

The movement evolved in Brazil through the Rio de Janeiro "Neo-Concretism" beginning in 1959:

"Against constructive orthodoxies and geometric dogmatism, the Neo-Concretists advocate freedom of experimentation, a return to expressive intentions, and the recovery of subjectivity."[5]

1960s: Historically, his work is noted for the "active objects," created during this period, which combine the color of painting with the relief of sculpture. Typically, these works are painted on canvas and mounted on wood, displaying geometric painting on three of the four edges, while the fourth edge attaches to the wall, preventing the viewer from encompassing the work in a single glance[6].

1954: He co-founded a graphic design studio with Hércules Barsotti (1914-2010) and participated in the Ars Nova movement, creating concrete-visual poems presented at the Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia—TBC. In 1955, he co-founded the magazine Teatro Brasileiro. He designed sets, costumes, and productions for Teatro de Arena and Teatro Cultura Artística. In 1957, he received an award from the São Paulo Association of Theater Critics and served as a technical advisor for the magazine Vértice.

In 1958, he traveled to Europe for study, and upon returning the following year, joined the Rio de Janeiro Neo-Concreto Group alongside Hércules Barsotti, Ferreira Gullar (1930-…), Franz Weissmann (1911-2005), Lygia Clark (1920-1988), and others.

1960: Between 1959 and 1962, he produced the series Objetos Ativos, works that explore plane and volume as plastic elements, challenging the use of the canvas as the sole support for pictorial language.

He was co-founder and member of the Brazilian Association of Industrial Design—ABDI—and the Grupo Novas Tendências. From 1966 to 1967, he designed textile patterns for industrial production.

In the 1980s, he began exploring constructions in wood, metal, stainless steel, and other materials, creating works with effects of color and movement, known as Pluri-objetos.

In the "Willys de Castro Exhibition," curated by historian Regina Teixeira de Barros[7] and presented in 2012 at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, the major thematic groups were identified: "Angels" (1955), "Sum of Planes" and "Active Objects[8]" (1959-1962), "Pluriobjetos" (1988), and Graphic Projects.

Despite Waldemar Cordeiro’s rigid leadership, the concretists followed distinct paths among themselves: Fiaminghi, Saciloto, Nogueira Lima, Cordeiro, Lothar Charoux, and Wyllis himself, not forgetting the Rio de Janeiro group: Amílcar de Castro, Weissmann, Palatnik, Carvão, Lygia Pape, Oiticica, among others.

Florilégio

Willys de Castro created his first paintings at the end of the 1940s and, from 1950 onwards, worked with geometric abstraction. In 1954, he co-founded the Estúdio de Projetos Gráficos with the artist Hércules Barsotti (1914), where he remained until 1964. He focused on visual programming and textile pattern design. During the 1950s and 1960s, he also worked on theater sets and costumes. The artist’s production in the second half of the 1950s is closely aligned with the concrete art movement. He simply titled his works Paintings, numbering them or indicating they were second or third versions. His work revolves around a deliberately limited set of concerns: balance, tension, and instability.

The work Desintegração 5 (n.d.) features a structure composed of colored triangles arranged along a central-diagonal axis, which seems to rotate upon itself. These triangles are connected to one another only at a single vertex. The composition suggests a balance on the verge of collapse, stabilized by triangles formed in the voids between the colored shapes. Symmetry and asymmetry coexist in the work, along with visible and invisible elements. In Painting 172 (n.d.), the artist explores the metaphor of an eclipse, depicting one circular form passing over another. In another work, Painting (1958), Willys investigates contiguity and separation: as in a game of billiards, spheres touch and propel one another. These works engage with elements and concerns typical of the concrete movement: pure colors, geometric forms, optical and kinetic effects, and proximity to graphic design. The basic structure of the painting remains intact, unlike works produced later.

From 1959 onwards, he created the Objetos Ativos, his most renowned works, consisting of rectangular wooden pieces—profiles or rulers—covered in canvas, with three surfaces painted in abstract-geometric patterns. These objects are mounted on the wall on one side. The frontal plane displays a continuity that extends to the lateral planes. The viewer must move and allow their gaze to travel across the surfaces to perceive the object in its entirety. The work appears to float in space, created in the moment of its perception. The artist addresses the tension between the two-dimensional surface and real space. His proposal challenges the use of the canvas as a mere vehicle for pictorial language, aligning him with the neoconcrete works of Lygia Clark (1920–1988) and Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980).

After nearly two decades without exhibiting, in the mid-1970s and building on his research with the Objetos Ativos, Willys developed the Pluriobjects: metal or wooden sculptures resulting from operations similar to those of the Objetos Ativos, involving the displacement of a portion or element that reorganizes the whole. These works resonate with other three-dimensional experiments by artists such as Amilcar de Castro (1920–2002) and Franz Weissmann (1911–2005). In Pluriobjeto A6 (1988), for instance, he works with a vertical wooden structure, exploring, through displacement, the tension between stability and instability, while imparting a sense of lightness. As in the Objetos Ativos, the Pluriobjects are never complete, as there is no ideal point of observation; the viewer must approach them from multiple perspectives.

Willys de Castro explores subtle relationships between form, color, space, and time. He is one of the most notable participants of the neoconcrete movement and stands out for pioneering research that challenged the two-dimensional canvas as the primary support for pictorial language. For art critic Frederico Morais, the Objetos Ativos represent his greatest contribution to Brazilian constructive art.

Critiques

"Regardless of his reduced production in later years—focused primarily on visual programming or textile pattern projects—Willys de Castro, in the early 1960s as a participant in the neoconcrete movement, created a series of works he termed active objects, whose importance continues to resonate today. Similar to Barsotti’s drawings and paintings, but endowed with a vibrant, playful, and lyrical chromaticity, and clearly advancing from the plane into space, these objects revisited the perennial question of the best meeting point between the virtual and the real. They were wooden pieces, plank-thick, geometrically treated on three of their four surfaces, with the fourth affixed to the wall, allowing the viewer a 180-degree visual journey, yet never a complete perception at a single moment. Ferreira Gullar discerned in them an attempt to eliminate 'the basic surface of painting, reducing the frontal plane of the work to the edge of the surface, to its thickness. The color occupying this narrow plane from top to bottom suddenly breaks at a certain point, and the fragment of color missing there slides onto the lateral plane, indicating continuity of the surface beyond the plane. The issue posed in these works is intriguing and new, for it repositions, in other terms, the conflict between the two-dimensional surface and the depth of real space: time—the movement of the viewer—restores the two-dimensionality of the three-dimensional space.' Today, in the few new objects produced, Willys de Castro has sought to refine that early research, including, occasionally, in the realm of multiples, extracting all the richness of implicit possibilities."
Roberto Pontual
PONTUAL, Roberto. Arte/ Brasil/ hoje: 50 anos depois. São Paulo: Collectio, 1973. p.393.

"(...) Less about creating syntheses or adding things to the world, Willys de Castro seems determined to dissect the miracles of reason, exploring the various and complex dimensions and articulations that produce any given thing. From the active objects of 1959 onward, his strategy was less about creating objects than revealing their problematic nature, highlighting their situation, pointing to their essence, and ultimately investigating the conditions of their appearance. If the issue of appearance harkens back to the purest Greek metaphysical tradition, it receives here a decidedly modern response—interpreting perception as a mode of logical making. Art, of course, does not merely replicate scientific formulations. The aesthetic dimension does much more: it reconnects the individual to the tumultuous and strange contemporary world by enabling the sensory experience of the Real as understood and constructed by modern science. Like Josef Albers, for instance, Willys de Castro sees art as an effort to structure reality in parallel with science and inseparable from it. If one argues that there is a scientific element in this art, one might agree—only to add that ultimately, there is also an artistic dimension in science."
Ronaldo Brito
MODERNIDADE: arte brasileira do século XX. Paris: Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1988.

"Willys de Castro and Hércules Barsotti are two São Paulo-based artists who, dissenting from Waldemar Cordeiro’s leadership, aligned with the Rio group and participated in the neoconcrete exhibitions. As painters, both employed a minimalist vocabulary derived from concrete art. Willys de Castro, however, challenged the use of the canvas as a support for pictorial language, leading him to create the 'active objects' (...). Willys de Castro’s active objects derive from the same inventive lineage as other neoconcrete works, especially Oiticica’s 'reliefs' and some of Lygia’s 'modulated surfaces'. They are akin yet distinct, offering different solutions to the same generative question: the painting (or canvas) as a pictorial object. Just as the abandonment of finish (fini) in Impressionist painting signaled the autonomy of pictorial language, eliminating the object as theme led to a break with the canvas’s two-dimensional surface. Willys, so to speak, positions it perpendicularly to the wall, revealing its edge, its thickness, and paints upon it, executing a micro-composition that, extending onto the lateral face, emphasizes its three-dimensionality."
Ferreira Gullar
AMARAL, Aracy (coord.). Arte construtiva no Brasil: Coleção Adolpho Leirner. São Paulo: DBA, 1998. p.178-181.

"At first glance, Willys de Castro’s early concrete works resemble those of the Ruptura group. They utilize a 'grid' underpinning the arrangement of visual elements through mathematical formulas and seek an anonymous image. However, the use of color immediately distinguishes his works. One of the few coloristic talents of Brazilian concretism, understanding form and color inseparably—form-color—he disregarded the chromatic dogma of Waldemar Cordeiro and his followers: the prescription of primary and complementary colors, the prohibition of tonalism, and the dichotomy between form and color with subordination of the latter to the former—simple yet restrictive rules, proposing color as concept. (...) Willys de Castro’s explorations in concretism, aiming to renew the pictorial plane and Euclidean geometry, developed along three investigative lines: examining the spatiality characteristic of easel painting, studying the semantic possibilities of the geometric visual lexicon, and integrating plastic and informational research into a single vein of experimentation. The achievement of a support resistant to illusory maneuvers and a formal language free from the obligation to depict worldly things were crucial steps in the painter’s self-awareness and the acquisition of self-presenting, autonomous plastic-informational means."
Roberto Conduru
CONDURU, Roberto. Willys de Castro: o belo na ordem do dia. 1998. 104 p., il. b&w. Master's Thesis, Rio de Janeiro, 1998, pp. 16-18.

"Willys de Castro always strove to create self-referential works, drawing the viewer’s attention to what occurs within the confined space of the work. As the artist wrote: 'Containing events of its own time—initiated, transpired, concluded, and restarted—and demonstrated there clearly, fluidly, and indefinitely, the Active Object inaugurates itself in the world as an instrument to recount itself.' In it, front and back, inside and outside, center and periphery, real and virtual, viewer and work cease to oppose each other. The piece seems to float in a space not yet named, created at the moment of perception. In the Active Object, as in his 1980s Pluriobjects, space is not unifocal or perspectival but open, enveloping, phenomenological. The activated viewer must attend to everything occurring on the canvas, relief, or object, linking presence and absence, filling voids, completing what is incomplete, moving in elliptical trajectories. Time is the raw material—not the machine-like, pendular, repetitive time, but organic, bodily time, always unpredictable."
Frederico Morais
TRIDIMENSIONALIDADE: arte brasileira do século XX. 2nd ed. São Paulo: Itaú Cultural: Cosac & Naify, 1999, p. 232.

"While Clark and Oiticica ultimately abandoned painting after exhausting the real and virtual potentials of the plane, Hércules Barsotti never ceased painting, whereas Willys de Castro lingered for long periods in the liminal zone between canvas and object. Knowledgeable of painting’s inherent issues, he meticulously explored multiple facets of the problem as a double agent might. Aware that a visual event confined to the plane can never be exhausted in a single reading, he employed minimal interventions to guide the eye across the surface from edge to edge, perceiving gaps and shifts, thereby reconstructing the composition gestaltically. Through small openings and broad leaks, he suggests the continuation of painting beyond the rectangle. Paint spilling onto the support’s side and back—a 180-degree rotation—asserts the thickness essential to volume: in the plane perpendicular to the wall, what was side becomes front, and back disappears. Emphasis on the originally lateral plane reduces the object to a slat with small cuts and displacements. The painting eventually vacates the narrow space, leaving wooden beams or metal strips against the wall. Step by step, through discreet and consequent actions, Willys de Castro forms his plastic thought, methodologically equating his work with an investigative endeavor."
Maria Alice Milliet
MOSTRA DO REDESCOBRIMENTO, 2000, SÃO PAULO, SP. Modern Art. São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo: Associação Brasil 500 anos Artes Visuais, 2000, p.54.

Collections

Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, University of São Paulo - SP
Collection of the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo - SP
Raquel Arnaud Art Cabinet - São Paulo SP

Solo Exhibitions

1959 - São Paulo, SP - Solo exhibition at Galeria de Arte das Folhas
1962 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - Solo exhibition at Petite Galerie
1962 - São Paulo, SP - Solo exhibition at Petite Galerie
1983 - São Paulo, SP - Solo exhibition at Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud

Group Exhibitions

1953 - São Paulo, SP - Salão de Agosto, at Casa do Povo
1954 - São Paulo, SP - 3rd Paulista Salon of Modern Art, at Galeria Prestes Maia
1957 - São Paulo, SP - 4th São Paulo International Biennial, at Ciccilo Matarazzo Sobrinho Pavilion
1957 - São Paulo, SP - 6th Paulista Salon of Modern Art, at Galeria Prestes Maia - Governor’s Award
1958 - São Paulo, SP - 7th Paulista Salon of Modern Art, at Galeria Prestes Maia
1959 - Asunción, Paraguay - Obras del Museo de Arte Moderno de San Pablo, at Salon Carlos Antonio Lopes
1959 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - 1st Neoconcrete Art Exhibition, at MAM/RJ
1959 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - Livro-Poema, at Jornal do Brasil
1959 - Salvador, BA - 1st Neoconcrete Art Exhibition, at Galeria Belvedere da Sé
1960 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - 2nd Neoconcrete Art Exhibition, at Ministry of Education and Culture
1960 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - 9th National Salon of Modern Art, at MAM/RJ
1960 - Zurich, Switzerland - Konkrete Kunst, at Helmhaus
1961 - Paris, France - 2nd Biennale of Youth, at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
1961 - São Paulo, SP - 3rd Neoconcrete Art Exhibition, at MAM/SP
1961 - São Paulo, SP - 6th São Paulo International Biennial, at Ciccilo Matarazzo Sobrinho Pavilion
1963 - Kobe, Japan - International Society of Plastic Arts, at Daimaru Exhibition Hall
1964 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - 2nd The Face and the Work, at Galeria Ibeu Copacabana
1965 - London, England - Brazilian Art Today, at Royal Academy of Arts
1966 - Bonn, Germany - Brasilianische Kunst Heute, at Beethovenhalle
1967 - São Paulo, SP - Print Exhibition, at Galeria Arte
1969 - São Paulo, SP - Original Prints, at Galeria Astréia
1970 - São Paulo, SP - Inaugural Exhibition, at Galeria Astréia
1971 - São Paulo, SP - Retrospective of Brazilian Fashion, at MASP
1972 - São Paulo, SP - Arte/Brasil/Hoje: 50 Years Later, at Galeria da Collectio
1973 - Brussels, Belgium - Image of Brazil, at Manhattan Center
1975 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - Communication According to Visual Artists, at Rede Globo (itinerant)
1977 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - Brazilian Constructive Project in Art: 1950-1962, at MAM/RJ
1977 - São Paulo, SP - Brazilian Constructive Project in Art: 1950-1962, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1982 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - Contemporaneity: Homage to Mário Pedrosa, at MAM/RJ
1983 - São Paulo, SP - Imagining the Present, at Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud
1984 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - Neoconcretism 1959-1961, at Galeria de Arte Banerj
1984 - São Paulo, SP - Tradition and Rupture: Synthesis of Brazilian Art and Culture, at Fundação Bienal
1985 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - Encounters, at Petite Galerie
1985 - São Paulo, SP - Highlights of Contemporary Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1987 - Paris, France - Modernity: Brazilian Art of the 20th Century, at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
1987 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ - 1st Geometric Abstraction: Concretism and Neoconcretism, at Fundação Nacional de Arte, Centro de Artes
1987 - São Paulo, SP - 19th São Paulo International Biennial - In Search of Essence: Elements of Reduction in Brazilian Art, at Fundação Bienal
1987 - São Paulo, SP - 1st Geometric Abstraction: Concretism and Neoconcretism, at MAB/FAAP

Posthumous Exhibitions

1988 - São Paulo SP - Aventuras da Ordem, at Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud
1988 - São Paulo SP - MAC 25 Years: Recent Acquisitions and Donations, at MAC/USP
1988 - São Paulo SP - Modernity: 20th Century Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1989 - São Paulo SP - 10 Sculptors, at Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud
1990 - São Paulo SP - Coherence - Transformation, at Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud
1991 - São Paulo SP - Constructivism: Poster Art 40/50/60, at MAC/USP
1992 - Curitiba PR - 10th Curitiba City Print Exhibition / America Show, at Museu da Gravura
1992 - Zurich (Switzerland) - Brasilien: Entdeckung und Selbstentdeckung, at Kunsthaus Zürich
1993 - São Paulo SP - Masp at Morumbi Shopping, at Shopping Morumbi
1994 - São Paulo SP - Brazil 20th Century Biennial, at Fundação Bienal
1994 - São Paulo SP - Solo Exhibition, at Masp
1994 - São Paulo SP - Willys de Castro: Works 1954-1961, at Escritório de Arte Sylvio Nery da Fonseca
1996 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Constructive Trends in the MAC/USP Collection: Construction, Measure, and Proportion, at CCBB
1996 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Art: 50 Years of History in the MAC/USP Collection: 1920-1970, at MAC/USP
1996 - São Paulo SP - The World of Mario Schenberg, at Casa das Rosas
1997 - Porto Alegre RS - 1st Mercosur Visual Arts Biennial, at Fundação Bienal de Artes Visuais do Mercosul
1997 - Porto Alegre RS - Constructive Approach and Design, at Espaço Cultural ULBRA
1997 - São Paulo SP - Three-Dimensionality in 20th Century Brazilian Art, at Itaú Cultural
1998 - Belo Horizonte MG - Three-Dimensionality in 20th Century Brazilian Art, at Itaú Cultural
1998 - Brasília DF - Three-Dimensionality in 20th Century Brazilian Art, at Itaú Galeria
1998 - Penápolis SP - Three-Dimensionality in 20th Century Brazilian Art, at Galeria Itaú Cultural
1998 - São Paulo SP - 24th São Paulo International Biennial, at Fundação Bienal
1998 - São Paulo SP - Constructive Art in Brazil: Adolpho Leirner Collection, at MAM/SP
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Constructive Art in Brazil: Adolpho Leirner Collection, at MAM/RJ
1999 - São Paulo SP - Everyday Life / Art. Consumption - The Metamorphosis of Consumption, at Itaú Cultural
2000 - Lisbon (Portugal) - 20th Century: Art from Brazil, at Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Mira Schendel, Sérgio de Camargo and Willys de Castro, at CCBB
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition. Contemporary Art, at Fundação Bienal
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Sculpture: From Pinacoteca to Jardim da Luz, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2000 - São Paulo SP - The Angels Are Back, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2001 - São Paulo SP - Solo Exhibition, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2001 - São Paulo SP - Trajectory of Light in Brazilian Art, at Itaú Cultural
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Archipelagos: The Plural Universe of MAM, at MAM/RJ
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Art in the Fadel Collection: From Modern Restlessness to Autonomy of Language, at CCBB
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Paths of the Contemporary 1952-2002, at Paço Imperial
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Genealogy of Space, at Galeria do Parque das Ruínas
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Parallels: Brazilian Art of the Second Half of the 20th Century in Context, Cisneros Collection, at MAM/RJ
2002 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Art in the Fadel Collection: From Modern Restlessness to Autonomy of Language, at CCBB
2002 - São Paulo SP - The Plan as Structure of Form, at Espaço MAM - Villa-Lobos
2002 - São Paulo SP - Parallels: Brazilian Art of the Second Half of the 20th Century in Context, Cisneros Collection, at MAM/SP
2003 - Belo Horizonte MG - Geometric, at Léo-Bahia Arte Contemporânea
2003 - Brasília DF - Brazilian Art in the Fadel Collection: From Modern Restlessness to Autonomy of Language, at CCBB
2003 - Campos dos Goytacazes RJ - Planar-Spatial Poem, at Sesc
2003 - Mexico City (Mexico) - Cuasi Corpus: Concrete and Neo-Concrete Art from Brazil: A Selection from the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art and Adolpho Leirner Collection, at Museo Rufino Tamayo
2003 - Nova Friburgo RJ - Planar-Spatial Poem, at Galeria Sesc Nova Friburgo
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Project in Black and White, at Silvia Cintra Galeria de Arte
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Order x Freedom, at MAM/RJ
2003 - São Paulo SP - Printworks Are Fine, Thank You, at Espaço Virgílio
2003 - São Paulo SP - Sculptors, Sculptures, at Pinakotheke
2003 - São Paulo SP - Tomie Ohtake in the Spiritual Fabric of Brazilian Art, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake
2003 - São Paulo SP - A Difficult Moment of Balance, at Espaço MAM - Villa-Lobos
2004 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 90 Years of Tomie Ohtake, at MNBA
2004 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Tomie Ohtake in the Spiritual Fabric of Brazilian Art, at MNBA
2005 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Soto: The Construction of Immateriality, at CCBB