Sergio Camargo
Mitterrand | Temple is pleased to present, in collaboration with Galeria Raquel Arnaud (São Paulo), an exhibition dedicated to Sergio Camargo (1930–1990), a major figure of twentieth-century abstract sculpture. On view from October 20 to December 20, 2025, the exhibition offers a journey through more than three decades of creation.
Trained in Paris in the late 1940s, Camargo was influenced by Brancusi, Arp, and Vantongerloo before developing a radically singular body of work. In the early 1960s, he conceived his celebrated series of white-painted wooden reliefs, composed of cylindrical fragments arranged in geometric rhythms. These compositions, where light itself becomes matter, earned him international recognition as early as 1963, when he was awarded the International Sculpture Prize at the Paris Biennial.
From the mid-1960s onward, after establishing a studio in Massa Carrara, Italy, Camargo adopted white marble as his principal medium. Its luminosity and fine grain allowed him to explore with even greater depth the interplay of shadow and volume. In the 1970s and 1980s, he also turned to black Belgian stone, whose density and opacity offered a striking counterpoint to marble. The contrast between black and white, absorption and reflection, became a structuring principle of his sculptural practice.
The selection presented in Paris reflects this evolution, from the early wooden reliefs to the refined marble and black stone sculptures. It highlights a constant pursuit: to transcend materiality and create vibrant, silent, meditative spaces. For Camargo, sculpture is defined not only by its mass but by the perceptual experience it provokes, where light, density, and rhythm guide the gaze toward a dimension that is both sensory and spiritual.
Organized in close collaboration with Galeria Raquel Arnaud, long-standing representative of the Camargo Estate, this exhibition pays tribute to one of the most innovative sculptors of abstraction, whose work is today held in prestigious institutions such as MoMA (New York), Tate (London), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), and the Museo de Arte Moderno de São Paulo.