MASP

As well as depicting experiences of Latin American landscape and culture, Costa Rican artist Federico Herrero experiments with elements characteristic to painting, such as brush strokes and the materiality of paint, pushing his work to the borderline between figuration and abstraction. The artist has painted the Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro in several works, with saturated, flat colors. Titled in Spanish, with different scales and painting techniques, these works do not constitute a series, but seek to materialize, according to the artist, different sensations provoked by the carioca landscape, marked by the interaction between nature and the city. Pan de Azúcar is the largest canvas of this set. The central area, which represents the mount, contains only the raw canvas, while on the edges of the composition there are many elements, such as spray marks, graphics that refer to children’s drawings, fields of color, and thick oil paint strokes. By emphasizing the painting elements on the edges of the work, Herrero leads our gaze to move around the edges of the composition, making us think about the relations between the privileged and the poor areas of the city and creating a vibration between figure and background. In this sense, there is also a transit between the micro and the macro, as most of the painting is empty, while on the edges and sides there is a diversity of elements that generate contrasts between bright and opaque, smooth and textured areas—something that can only be seen live by alternating one’s proximity and distance.

— Leandro Muniz, assistent curator, MASP, 2021

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