VALERIA NASCIMENTO
Valeria Nascimento (b.Brazil 1962) spent her childhood surrounded by exuberant Brazilian landscapes inspiring her from an early age and giving rise to her affection and fascination with natural forms. This inspiration is clearly present today in her beautifully delicate, whisper-thin, and (mostly) neutrally coloured ceramics. Valeria Nascimento's artwork can be made from hundreds of hand-formed ceramic shapes which are subsequently combined into small or large, or even wall-spanning artworks which can take months to prepare and assemble.
Valeria Nascimento has created work for luxury brands such as Chanel, Escada, and Wedgewood, she has large installations in Skye Gyngall's Spring Restaurant in London's Somerset House, as well as in Tiffany and Co's stores in London's Canary Wharf and Montreal, Canada. Bucherer jewellery stores across Europe house some incredibly impressive hanging installations, and Nascimento's work can be found on cruise liners, aswell as in a number of luxury hotels worrldwide. On a more intimate scale Nascimento creates bespoke pieces for private homes, and we work with a number of interior designers on site specific projects. Nascimento's artowrk has appeared as part of exhibitions in London's V&A Museum and the Museo Historico Nacional in Río de Janeiro, Brazil.
Initially trained as an architect Valeria Nascimento became greatly inspired by the works of Roberto Burle Marx and Oscar Niemeyer. She graduated with a degree in 1985 cementing her interest in the fusion between urban landscapes and natural forms. After graduating she moved to Rio to pursue her Architectural career, it was here, a year later, where she was introduced to clay and became fascinated by its multiple possibilities for expression and development of ideas.
Nascimento relocated to London in 1999, and has been represented by the Woolff Gallery since 2007. Her architectural training reappears through repetitive sequences and structures, where tiny individual hand-rolled cones are repeated for many metres, resembling coral reefs, sea anemones, tiny poppy flowers, leaves, petals, or pods. So thin as to resemble paper, their jagged edges and cool whiteness give the impression of hardness at first, but the creamy off-white and shadows cast inside the ceramic hollows instead give off a soft, comforting warmth – an effect put to good use for her wall commission for the cancer clinic at Barts Hospital. Nascimento lives and works in London.
Please contact us on: info@woolffgallery.co.uk with any enquiries regarding Valeria Nascimento's artwork
Click here to download Valeria Nascimento 2017 Exhibition catalogue
Click here to watch Valeria Nascimento's 2013 exhibition video