Marina Perez Simão

The twenty watercolors on view at Cahiers d’Art convey the sensory grandeur of the landscapes Marina Perez Simão experienced growing up between Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro. Informed by her memories and history of art, she pursues the balance between her intuitiveness and her deep interest in color theory.

 Sweeping brushstrokes and the artist’s continuous study of the intensity of colors engender dramatic and surprising compositions where light and darkness engage in a poetic and abstract wrestle.

 For this exhibition, Marina Perez Simão presents watercolors referring to the birth of the creative process of her paintings.

She denotes a metaphorical resonance between the ‘first moment’ of her watercolors and André Breton’s poem ‘Il allait être cinq heures du matin,’ published in the poem collection Clair de Terre (1923), where the French surrealist poet describes the birth of the light; the very first moment when the sunlight refracts on the surface of the Earth and creates what is called a day.