Leda Catunda is often associated with the so-called Geração 80 [1980s Generation], a group of artists who emerged at the end of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship and whose motto was “the pleasure of painting,” as opposed to the more severe and cerebral character of conceptual art of the 1970s. Catunda reinvigorates painting in an irreverent manner, introducing popular, intimate, and everyday references. A statement of hers is significant: “The work can have conceptual content and at the same time it can be handmade and painting.” There is a certain popular and handmade aesthetic in her work, with the use of fabrics from the “house linen section” as media for painting—towels, sheets, flannels, blankets, and doormats. “Since I am not the queen of carpentry,” Catunda said, “I chose sewing.” Her doctoral dissertation had a suggestive title: The Poetics of Softness, connecting Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), Lygia Clark (1920–1988), Eva Hesse (1936–1970) and Yayoi Kusama. In Catunda’s work, these features take on the “soft” forms of tongues, mouths, bellies, brains, livers, and flies. Barriga, made of canvas painted with acrylic paint and stuffed with chopped pillow foam, is an iconic work by the artist, who has participated in two biennials in São Paulo. The belly is that part in the middle of the body that can disturb or bring comfort, swell or hurt, be full or empty, carry a punch or carry another human being. It expresses interiority, intimacy, susceptibility, and, above all, the possibility of painting as representation and construction of a body—soft, affective, handmade, and belonging to all of us.

— Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director, MASP, 2023

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