Galeria Raquel Arnaud Gallery in São Paulo

Vila Madalena · Contemporary programme

Editorial Profile

Founded in 1974 as Gabinete de Arte, Galeria Raquel Arnaud is one of the most historically grounded commercial galleries working within contemporary art in São Paulo, with a program closely tied to the consolidation of Brazilian constructive and geometric abstraction as an internationally recognised tendency. Established by Raquel Arnaud — who had previously worked alongside Pietro Maria Bardi at MASP and directed the Arte Global space in the late 1970s — the gallery built its identity around a sustained commitment to concrete and geometric abstraction, kinetic art, installation, sculpture, and drawing, resisting programmatic shifts in favour of long-term curatorial coherence rather than market-led expansion. Its early exhibition histories brought together foundational figures of Brazilian modernism and neo-concretism, often producing publications designed in collaboration with the artists — among them Lygia Clark, Mira Schendel, Amilcar de Castro, and Hércules Barsotti — that became bibliographic references in their own right.

Now located at Rua Fidalga 125 in Vila Madalena, a district central to the city's commercial gallery circuit, this contemporary art gallery in São Paulo represents a roster that bridges generations: established figures such as Waltercio Caldas, Iole de Freitas, Carlos Cruz-Díez, Arthur Luiz Piza, and Carlos Zilio are shown alongside a younger cohort including Frida Baranek, Geórgia Kyriakakis, Carla Chaim, Elizabeth Jobim, and Ding Musa — practices extending from sculpture and installation to painting, photography, and object-making. This intergenerational structure reflects the gallery's dual ambition: to preserve and activate the Brazilian neo-concrete canon while supporting the emergence of new visual languages working in dialogue with it. Raquel Arnaud also founded the Instituto de Arte Contemporânea (IAC) in 1997, dedicated to cataloguing and preserving artist documentation, reinforcing the gallery's position within the gallery landscape of São Paulo as a structure invested in institutional memory as much as in the market.

Selected Artists

Iole de Freitas

Brazilian

SculptureInstallationPerformance
About

Sculptor and former contemporary dancer whose practice evolved from performative body studies and experimental film into a rigorous language of stainless steel. Her sinuous, site-responsive works negotiate relationships between space, light, surface, and bodily movement across wall-mounted pieces and large-scale installations.

Waltercio Caldas

Brazilian

SculptureConceptual ArtDrawing
About

Rio de Janeiro-based artist whose objects and works on paper systematically displace perception and resist conventional classification, configuring enigmatic arrangements of industrial and everyday materials as active vehicles of unresolvable thought rather than static objects of contemplation. Represented by the gallery since 1982.

Sergio Camargo

Brazilian

Sculpture
About

One of Brazil's foremost constructive-lineage sculptors, Camargo assembled restricted vocabularies of geometric volumes — cylinders, cubes, rectangles — in painted wood reliefs and Carrara marble compositions continuously animated by the dynamic incidence of light across their layered surfaces.

Shirley Paes Leme

Brazilian

InstallationDrawingMixed Media
About

Artist working across installation, drawing, sculpture, and printmaking with ephemeral industrial matter — soot, dust, air-conditioning filters, spider webs — and the poetic materiality of language, weaving connections between urban experience and the sensory memory of a rural childhood in Minas Gerais and Goiás.

Frida Baranek

Brazilian

SculptureDrawingMixed Media
About

Sculptor combining industrial materials — iron and steel filaments, oxidized rods and plates — with natural elements such as stone and wood. Her works, evoking tangles, vortexes, and debris, are conceived with a deliberate morphological indeterminacy that allows different configurations in each exhibition context.

Carlos Cruz-Diez

Venezuelan

PaintingInstallationConceptual Art
About

Kinetic and Op Art master whose lifelong investigation into color as autonomous, mutable phenomenon gave rise to the celebrated series Physichromie, Chromosaturation, and Chromointerference — works in which the viewer's movement activates continuously shifting chromatic events across painting, installation, and large-scale public commissions.

Selected Exhibitions

noturno sem pé e cabeça

Solo show2026

Iole de Freitas

About

A solo presentation of new stainless steel sculptures including the "noturno" and "voadoras" series, in which sinuous polished metal forms treated with sand and automotive paint continue the artist's long-running investigation into space, surface, and bodily movement.

SculptureInstallation

"… toda palavra sã"

Group show2026

almandrade, Waltercio Caldas, Shirley Paes Leme

About

A three-artist exhibition bringing together works by almandrade, waltercio caldas, and shirley paes leme around shared concerns with language, sign, and form as carriers of meaning — connecting concrete poetry, perceptual enigma, and the material presence of the word.

Conceptual ArtMixed MediaDrawing

antonio manuel_ corte circuito

Solo show2025

Antonio Manuel

About

A solo exhibition by the politically engaged Brazilian-Portuguese artist whose practice, spanning over five decades, has consistently challenged the boundaries between art, mass media, and social reality through works that intervene in the circuits of information and representation.

Mixed MediaConceptual Art

waltercio caldas_ os espelhos

Solo show2025

Waltercio Caldas

About

A solo exhibition centered on the mirror as conceptual and perceptual device, presenting works in polished metal, cotton thread, and reflective surfaces that destabilize habitual seeing and produce states of sustained optical and cognitive displacement.

SculptureConceptual Art

sergio camargo_ Ética e Estética

Solo show2025

Sergio Camargo

About

An exhibition of relief sculptures and compositions in Carrara marble and painted wood by the late Rio de Janeiro sculptor, presenting geometric volumes — cylinders, cubes, rectangles — whose dynamic surfaces respond to the shifting incidence of light.

Sculpture

frida baranek_ deslocamentos

Solo show2024

Frida Baranek

About

A solo exhibition of new sculptural works in steel, iron filaments, and mixed industrial materials, continuing the artist's ongoing inquiry into structural tension, physical imbalance, and the formal vocabulary of displacement across configurations that shift with each installation context.

SculptureMixed Media

50 anos_ galeria raquel arnaud

Group show2024

About

A milestone anniversary exhibition marking fifty years of the gallery's programme, gathering historic and contemporary works by artists across five decades and tracing the gallery's sustained commitment to Brazilian constructive, kinetic, and contemporary art.

Curated Group ShowMixed Media

Gallery Overview

Galeria Raquel Arnaud
City
São Paulo
Area
Vila Madalena
Address
R. Fidalga, 125 - Vila Madalena, São Paulo - SP, 05432-070, Brazil
Type
Gallery
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