Among the central themes of Aldo Bonadei’s work are groups of buildings, especially those in the São Paulo neighborhood of Bixiga, where Bonadei lived and maintained a studio for many decades. Considered a pioneering Brazilian abstract artist, Bonadei made use of a color palette and composition influenced by the work of Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), and drew from Cubism in geometrically depicting landscapes. His urban landscapes were progressively dominated by tensions inherent to the compositions themselves, as in the painting Confronto [Confrontation] (1961), where one can barely glimpse allusions to architectural elements and sets of buildings—with effort, two stylized windows becomes visible at center, in green, surrounded by an irregular yellow square. Bonadei drew from this frequent motif in 20th century Brazilian art—rows of houses—but here the pictorial space is organized through a patchwork of colors in juxtaposed planes, like a kaleidoscope, obeying an abstract logic. These contiguous chromatic blocks seek to translate the city’s shapes and rhythms. Bonadei’s work during this period sought to reveal the tension between the rational organization of space and the chaos and movement of colors in such a landscape. Confrontation, the painting’s title, allows for multiple interpretations: a confrontation between the rigidity of geometry and the speed of urban flows, or one between observation of the outward world and the painting’s internal conditions.

— Guilherme Giufrida, assistant curator, MASP, 2018

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