Sergio Camargo Estate Brazilian, 1930-1998

Sergio Camargo was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1930. The son of a writer and art critic, he was introduced to artistic creation at an early age. He first studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, before devoting himself fully to sculpture. Between 1949 and 1950, he studied under Ossip Zadkine at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where he discovered the legacy of European modernism through artists such as Brancusi, Arp and Vantongerloo. These influences left a lasting mark on his conception of form, rhythm and space.

Back in Brazil in the 1950s, Camargo belonged to a generation of Latin American artists in search of a modern, abstract language. It was in Paris, however, where he settled again in the early 1960s, that he developed his most personal style: a series of painted wood reliefs composed of cylindrical fragments arranged in geometric structures. In these works, where light becomes matter, he achieved international recognition, receiving the International Sculpture Prize at the Paris Biennale in 1963.

From the mid-1960s onward, Camargo worked primarily in Massa Carrara, Italy, where he explored marble and stone, creating luminous reliefs and dense volumes that play on texture, depth and perception. Over three decades, he built a coherent and refined body of work, bridging the rigor of European abstraction with a Brazilian sensibility.

His sculptures have been widely exhibited, notably at the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Kassel, as well as in major museums such as the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Tate Modern in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In tribute to his work, a street in Rio de Janeiro now bears his name: Rua Escultor Sergio de Camargo, located in Barra da Tijuca, alongside other streets dedicated to Brazilian artists of the same generation, such as Alfredo Ceschiatti, Franz Weissmann and Mário Agostinelli.

Sergio Camargo died in Rio de Janeiro in 1990.