Biography

Cristina Canale (b. 1961, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) rose to prominence following her participation in the iconic group exhibition Como vai você, Geração 80?, at Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage (EAV Parque Lage) in Rio de Janeiro in 1984. Like many of her colleagues from the so-called "Generation 80", her early works reveal the influence of the international context as painting resurfaced, especially with that of German Neo-expressionism. Loaded with visual elements and thick paint, her early paintings have a material or textural characteristic that is reinforced by her use of contrasting and vivid colors. In the early 1990s, Canale moved to Germany to study in Düsseldorf under the guidance of the Dutch conceptual artist Jan Dibbets. Her compositions soon acquired a sense of spatiality, as she began to incorporate the use of planes and depth, while also adding greater fluidity to her use of colors. 

 

Cristina Canale’s work is often based off prosaic everyday scenes, which she extracts from advertising photography. Her paintings result in elaborate compositions that intertwine the figurative and the abstract, often blurring one with the other. According to the curator Tiago Mesquita, Canale’s production opposes the quest for constituing structures of the image, which artists such as Gerhard Richter and Robert Ryman engage with, tackling instead “the image and established genres of painting in a subjective manner following the belief in a singular experience.”

 

Cristina Canale lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Her recent solo exhibitions include: The Encounter, at Nara Roesler (2021), in New York, United States; Cabeças/Falantes, at Galeria Nara Roesler (2018), in São Paulo, Brazil ; Cristina Canale: Zwischen den Welten, at Kunstforum Markert Gruppe (2015), in Hamburg, Germany; Entremundos, at Paço Imperial (2014l, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Espelho e Memória – Spiegel und Erinnerung, at Galerie Atelier III (2014), in Barmstedt, Germany; Protagonista e Domingo, at Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz (IFF) (2013), in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. She participated in the 6th Bienal de Curitiba, Curitiba, Brazil (2011), and in the 21st Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (1991), for which she was awarded with the Prêmio Governador do Estado [Governor State Prize]. Recent group exhibitions include: Ateliê de gravura: da tradição à experimentação, at Fundação Iberê Camargo (FIC) (2019), in Porto Alegre, Brazil; Mulheres na Coleção MAR, at Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) (2018), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Modos de ver o Brasil: Itaú Cultural 30 anos, at Oca (2017), in São Paulo, Brazil; O espírito de cada época, at Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz (IFF) (2015), in São Paulo, Brazil; Figura humana, at Caixa Cultural (2014), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her works are included in important institutional collections, such as: Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC USP), São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói (MAC-Niterói), Niterói, Brazil; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM Rio), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.

Exhibitions

News

Press

  • brazil in berlin - a kreuzberger from rio Download

    brazil in berlin - a kreuzberger from rio

    Francesca Elsey, Exberliner 23.3.2018
  • the cosmos of cristina canale Download

    the cosmos of cristina canale

    Esther Harrison, ArtBerlin 17.7.2017
  • artes plásticas | cristina canale Download

    artes plásticas | cristina canale

    Joana Dale, Revista O Globo 2.10.2016
  • galeria nara roesler expõe relações entre figuração e abstração na obra de cristina canale Download

    galeria nara roesler expõe relações entre figuração e abstração na obra de cristina canale

    Cirley Ribeiro, Cultura FM 25.7.2014
  • livro revê 30 anos da delicada arte da pintora critsina canale Download

    livro revê 30 anos da delicada arte da pintora critsina canale

    Audrey Furlaneto, O Globo 15.4.2012
  • mistérios de cristina Download

    mistérios de cristina

    Maria Hirszman, O Estado de São Paulo 15.7.2011
  • um território mais intimista nas pinturas pinturas de critsina canale Download

    um território mais intimista nas pinturas pinturas de critsina canale

    Camila Molina, O Estado de São Paulo 23.7.2008
  • fragmentos narrativos Download

    fragmentos narrativos

    Revista Fundação Iberê Camargo 12.9.2007
  • em busca da nova paisagem Download

    em busca da nova paisagem

    Antonio Gonçalves Filho, O Estado de S. Paulo 24.2.2005

Video

Critical Essays

  • cabeças/falantes

    clarissa diniz
    Edges of the body have been present for a long time in Cristina Canale’s work. If Talkative (2018), one of her recent paintings, pushes into the foreground a sort of speech-razor able to cut the face – that monolith which, in a portrait, tends to marginalize everything else – this figure-background relationship is an echo of other angularities of her career, already expressed, for example, in her paintings from 1985. Just as in Talkative the portrait is a sort of trigger for the dispute between the hierarchies of the composition, at that moment a kiss was the theme for an inevitable tear in the space where the painting was operating. Constituted by cut-out and glued parts, the painting from 33 years ago did not have its bodies split by the background, but tore the space with its pictorial body, elbowing it in a hug. Cristina Canale, Untitled, 1985 As an embryo, it already evinced the artist’s interest for what she circumscribes as “tension in the coexistence between contradictions,”...