Hidebrando de Castro. Architecture of Light

The work of Hildebrando de Castro (Olinda, Brazil, 1957) has been exhibited in our galleries as part of group exhibitions in 2009 (New Perspectives: 14 Contemporary Brazilian Artists) and 2011 (Memory: 10 Years in Madrid). Architecture of Light, the exhibition opening on April 9th, is Hildebrando de Castro's first solo exhibition at the Fernando Pradilla Gallery and in Madrid.

Contemporary Brazilian architecture and its Brasília project, conceived by architects Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa in the 1960s, shaped the concept of modernity in Brazilian art and defined a national identity that would transform the country into an emblem of progress and its capital into a cutting-edge laboratory of experimentation. Brasilia, transformed into a veritable “open-air work of art,” decisively influenced the validation of a language that would take geometric abstraction beyond mathematical control toward a more human and sensory experience. Rational forms, colors, line and plane, and spatiality and three-dimensionality became the natural language for many contemporary artists, in which geometry and space emerged as protagonists and defining symbols of Brazilian identity.

Hildebrando de Castro embraces this legacy in his artistic practice: “My approach to geometry began in the architecture of Brasilia in 2009. I remember being deeply impressed by the beauty of the group of buildings aligned in perfect harmony on the Esplanade of Ministries, designed by Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa. However, it was in the Annex of the Chamber of Deputies where my gaze was captivated by a phenomenon that would definitively transform my artistic production: the facades covered by brise-soleil (sunshades), vertical blinds created by Le Corbusier.” There, architecture revealed itself to me not as a static structure, but as a living organism.” [HdC]

The paintings that make up Hildebrando de Castro's exhibition, Architecture of Light, are essentially based on the decomposition of structures into lines, planes, and plays of perspective. For Hildebrando, the dialogue between light and shadow, fullness and emptiness, is of vital importance in defining the volumes of his compositions, recreating the incidence of light on flat surfaces and the way in which it creates rhythmic modules.

Hildebrando de Castro has spent several years creating his series Janelas (Windows), windows of buildings and homes in which he has found a visual language to express himself: “In each window, the blinds opened or closed according to the needs of those who lived there, projecting shadows that drew new geometries and tones on the slats. During the days I was there, I returned to the same place, at the same time, using photography as a tool of memory to record these fleeting compositions. That facade was never the same; it was a canvas in constant flux. It was an awakening to the infinite repertoire of geometric forms that architecture could offer me.” [HdC]

In this exercise of abstracting windows from the facades of emblematic buildings, Hildebrando brings together in his new exhibition eight paintings at different scales and four wooden reliefs, which draw from architecture and light the ideal framework for the execution of his works.

This artist's purpose is not the faithful representation of the buildings, but rather to recreate their facades as the skin and filter of an organic geometry, a meeting point between the public and the private, through which reality is filtered. Thus, we witness the recreation of a group of works with which Hildebrando seeks to pay homage to the work of prominent international architects: Manuel Aires Mateus and Francisco Aires Mateus with the EDP Headquarters [2012-2015] in Lisbon; Roger Diener in collaboration with Helmut Federle and Gerold Wiederin on the Forum 3 Novartis Campus Building [2002-2005] in Basel; Luiz Nunes with the Caixa d’água Building [1934-1935] in Olinda, Brazil; Lúcio Costa with the Superquadra Sul 108 and 308 Building [1950-1960], representative of the use of the “cobogó” (latticework) in Brasília; Rafael de La-Hoz Castanys with his Lagasca 99 Building [2016-2018] in the Salamanca district of Madrid; and Maria Claudia Clemente and Francesco Isidori with the Città del Sole Building [2010-2016] in Rome.

Meanwhile, the works referencing the BBVA Headquarters building [2007-2015], designed by architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, are the result of a brief stay Hildebrando de Castro made in Madrid a couple of years ago, while preparing the exhibition for our gallery. Hildebrando acknowledges that the BBVA building captivated him not only for its interplay of light and shadow, the repetition and contrast of geometric patterns, but also for the compositional rhythm recreated on the façade of this emblematic Madrid landmark. Through direct observation and the photographic documentation characteristic of his creative process, Hildebrando manages to translate essential fragments of these buildings onto his canvases, transforming architecture into an intimate experience of geometry and color.

We are thus presented with pictorial compositions of “referential abstraction,” which play with the viewer's perception, creating optical illusions from repetitive geometric patterns such as windows or architectural frameworks. These connect his discourse to 20th-century artistic movements centered on geometry and abstraction, but from a contemporary perspective that links photography, urban reality, and precise painting, inviting reflection and analysis of light on surfaces.

Hildebrando de Castro's work has been included in numerous institutional exhibitions, among them the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes (MNBA), Rio de Janeiro; the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM), Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo; the Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro; the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (CCBB), Rio de Janeiro; Itaú Cultural, São Paulo; the Museu de Arte Moderna de Salvador, Bahia; and the Nuremberg Museum (Museen der Stadt Nürnberg), Germany. the Museum of Modern Art (Lentos Kunstmuseum), Linz, Austria; the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany, among others.