The Brazilianist Magazine

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The acclaimed plastic artist, Bia Garcez, born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, began drawing and painting when she was only eight years old. She was encouraged by her parents who saw early on that she was motivated to communicate with her own voice through the use of shapes and colors.

Bia Garcez shows her audience through her paintings an inimitable capacity to create images and transform them through her sensitivity, imagination and creative power into striking fragments of landscape. Lovers of art and landscape will certainly appreciate the harmonious movement of her brush strokes and the expressiveness of the coloring in her canvasses, which transport the viewer to places which typify the tropical beauty of Brazil's shores and hills: Búzios, Cabo Frio, Angra dos Reis, Parati, Porto Seguro, Trancoso, Porto de Galinhas, Itaipava, Petrópolis, Penedo, Visconde de Mauà, Ouro Preto, Triadentes and others.

Her work represents one of the most pristine expressions of our art and is the result of her ability to wed creativity with technique developed over her 30 years of work, aided by her professors among whom were Ivan Serpa, Hélio Oticica, Armínio Pascoal and Orlando Brito. Her formal training included courses at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, The Brazilian Society of Fine Arts, and the School of Visual Arts of Lage Park. She was able to develop her signature style through long hours painting in her atelier in Itaipava which she found to be the ideal place for inspiration and artistic production.

Bia Garcez' curriculum boasts a number of individual and collective expositions in well-known galleries and cultural centers both in Brazil and abroad. She received many prizes in plastic art salons including the Gold Medal in the Art Salon of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Honorable Mention in the First International Bienal of Contemporary Art of the Brazilian Association of Design and Visual Arts (ABD) and the Brazilian Association of the Press (ABI), as well as the Acquisition Prize for the collection of the National Economic Development Bank (BNDES). Her works can be found in prominent institutional and private collections. Some of her work presented here (left) can also be seen in a larger size on the website http://www.geocities.com/ro_trindade/bia_galeria.htm

Bia Garcez paints with a clear language accessible to all; she creates compositions which move her viewers to a reverie where they can imagine a purer and more harmonious world and lose themselves in their private thoughts and feelings.

The primary characteristic of her artistry is her use of multiple shades of blue, intermixing the sky and the sea in tones created with feeling and talent, transmitting what we could call "an esthetic sensation of peace and tranquillity".

Looking at her paintings nurtures my inner soul and gives me a feeling of calm and harmony. It was in these surroundings of creativity and art that I grew up and learned to love nature and beauty. I went through childhood and adolescence observing closely and admiring this very special person who was able to distance herself from her daily chores and worries to create her own artistic shapes and forms. Surrounded by her brushes, oils, and canvasses, she seemed to be embarked on a constant search for a utopia on earth and for her inner self by writing the story of her own life in such an original fashion.

My mother, Bia Garcez, through the example of her art, made me believe that it is possible to find happiness if we allow ourselves to express our feeling without fear, with simplicity and love. And, above all, she made me see that everything in life begins with a dream, a word, a gesture, a scratch, a simple brush stroke…

Rafael Garcez is Bia Garcez' son and works in the field of marketing and communications.