Eleonore Koch

Modern Art, London and Mendes Wood DM, New York are proud to present two concurrent exhibitions devoted to German-Brazilian painter Eleonor Koch (1926-2018). The exhibitions will bring together a group of works produced from the late 1960s, when the artist established herself in London, to the 1990s, upon her return to São Paulo.

Eleonore Koch occupies a unique place in the history of Brazilian modernism. Born in Berlin in 1926, she emigrated to Brazil aged ten alongside her Jewish family. Having completed her academic training at the School of Fine Arts, in São Paulo, in the mid-1940s, she later pursued her art studies in Paris (1949-50), where she had lessons at the Académie Julian, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and at Árpád Szenes' (1897-1985) studio. Upon her return to São Paulo, Koch started to exhibit her paintings whilst working as a set designer. In 1953, she undertook further studies under the painter Alfredo Volpi (1896-1988), who taught her to work with tempera. From then on, this became her medium of choice. In Koch’s painting the typical rhythmic texture achieved through delicate brushwork that characterises Volpi’s work acquires a particular vibrancy due to the fact that she was ambidextrous.

In spite of having featured in several exhibitions in Brazil by the mid-1950s, Koch's work was often the object of harsh criticism from prominent commentators at a time when geometric abstraction was the dominating trend in the country. Her distinctive paintings, which are characterised by rigorous and sparse compositions that combine the formal reduction of figures with a highly sophisticated use of colour, were often dismissed as 'primitive' or 'scrappy'. Over the decade, Koch unsuccessfully submitted works to the São Paulo Biennale open-call, having been rejected in 1953, 1955, and 1957. With the appointment of a new director for the 1959 Biennale, her work was finally featured in the prestigious exhibition. However, with her singular approach to painting - which draws on a constructive language whilst remaining markedly figurative -, the artist still experienced an acute sense of inadequacy in relation to the São Paulo art milieu and decided to relocate to Rio de Janeiro.

In 1966 Koch started to work with Mercury Gallery, in London, drawing the attention of businessman, politician and art collector Alistair McAlpine. Unable to make a living off her paintings in Brazil, she decided to move to London in 1968, where she would spend the next two decades showing at different galleries and maintaining a professional relationship with McAlpine. In London, her extensive research on colour, domestic themes and rigorous composition found echoes in the work of such British contemporaries associated with the emerging Pop movement as Patrick Caulfield and David Hockney. In a new development in her practice, she started using photographs as references for sketches and studies for a series of paintings focusing on European parks, starting with compositions that feature architectural elements found in London's Regents Park.

The work produced between 1971 to 1977 was almost exclusively purchased by McAlpine, whose collection was largely devastated by a fire in 1982. With the end of McAlpine’s patronage, Koch took up a job as a translator for the Scotland Yard. The 1970s also marked the beginning of her experiments with pastel drawings and the use of collage in studies for paintings, the latter characterised by in-depth investigations around colour that resemble the procedures employed by Albers - a distant relative of Koch’s - in his Homage to the Square series. Some of Koch's remarkable series from this period include works depicting piers and other seaside structures; as well as landscapes inspired by a trip to Egypt in 1979.

In 1982 Koch had her last solo exhibition in London at Rutland Gallery and the following year she participated in the group show '18 Women Brazilian Artists' at the Barbican Art Gallery. Meanwhile, her work started to feature more regularly in museum exhibitions in São Paulo, finally gaining some overdue recognition by a new generation of critics. She returned to São Paulo in 1989, where she continued to explore her masterful use of colour in works that probe numerous variations of a theme in synthetic compositions embracing the more vivid chromatic palette of the tropics.

In 2009, her work started to gain renewed critical attention with the solo exhibition “Eleonor Koch: Ordered World”, curated by Fernanda Pitta at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (IAC) in São Paulo. Her first monograph - “Lore Koch” - was published by Cosac & Naify in 2013. Eleonor Koch’s work is included in the forthcoming edition of the São Paulo Biennale (2021).

QUOTES

"I learned through observation and being together, eating together, washing the dishes, observing how he prepared the canvas, followed his work rhythm, lived his fate as an artist and had the courage to destroy works that were not up to the mark."

—Eleonor Koch on what she learned from Volpi (Interview with Olívio Tavares Araújo, Revista Istoé, 30/10/1985)

"In the 1950s, (critics) attempted to relate my work to metaphysical painting. But, in truth, I have always used images that are glimpsed from the outside world and which coincide with images I bring within."

—Eleonor Koch (Interview with Casimiro Xavier de Mendonça, Revista Veja, 23/10/1985)

"In Koch’s work, architecture expels its inhabitants so that beauty is not tainted by human presence - the same can be said of Nicholas de Stael, whose abstract landscapes have influenced figurative artists from San Francisco’s Bay Area (Richard Diebenkorn and David Park)."

—Antonio Gonçalves Filho (O Estado de São Paulo newspaper, 25/07/2009)

"Her work is individualistic and controlled, a deliberate reduction to basics of frequently complicated figurative material. (…) These works are gloriously easy to analyse in the artist’s terms: a solitary buoy, a single fountain, in the midst of a highly cerebral reconstruction of nature. However, like Hockney in his almost innocent moments of simplicity, Koch is also sensitive to the general climate. She frequently returns to the same themes - vase, fountain, chair - and changes the colour on each occasion. Blue and green leaves in a grey vase give way to brown and blue leaves in a white vase. The result is a variation on a spiritual state that carries the paintings far beyond a biographical level."

—Steve Lavell (Eleonore Koch: Rutland Gallery. Art Review, 2 June 1982)

"Coming back to live in Brazil was certainly the most important experience of the last few years, and independently of my reasons and my decision, the changes in visual context affected me profoundly. In Europe I felt a little like an intruder, looking at landscapes, walking through parks and gardens. I did not belong to the setting in which I lived, which perhaps is why it made my perception sharper and the experience so enriching. My return, after more than twenty years, brought back my vision of landscapes, which in my affective plane had never disappeared. Walking along the horizontal lines of a beach, I am reclaiming space, in an almost inverse experience to that of when I was abroad."

—Eleonore Koch (Catalogue, São Paulo: Sylvio Nery da Fonseca Escritório de Arte, 1993)

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1952 - Galeria Ambiente, São Paulo 1956 - Eleonor Koch, São Paulo Museum of Modern Art 1960 - Galeria São Luis, São Paulo 1960 - Petite Galerie, Rio de Janeiro 1964 - Seta Galeria, São Paulo 1965 - Galeria Goeldi, Rio de Janeiro 1972 - Rutland Gallery, London 1978 - Campbell & Franks Fine Art, London 1981 - São Paulo Museum of Modern Art 1990 - Sylvio Nery Gallery, São Paulo 2009 - Eleonore Koch: Ordered World, Centro Universitário Maria Antonia, São Paulo

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1957 - 5th São Paulo Biennale 1961 - National Salon of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro 1961 - 6th São Paulo Biennale 1963 - 7th São Paulo Biennale 1965 - 8th São Paulo Biennale 1966 - Mixed Summer Exhibition, Mercury Gallery, London 1968 - Redmark Gallery, London 1979 - Theon Spanudis Collection, University of São Paulo Museum of Contemporary Arts 1983 - 18 Women Artists, Barbican Art Gallery, London 2004 - Theon Spanudis Collection, Centro Universitário Mariantônia, São Paulo 2011 - Modernisms in Brazil, University of São Paulo Museum of Contemporary Arts 2020 - ‘Wind’ - group exhibition, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo 2021 - 34th São Paulo Biennale