Pedro Varela Paints a Dreamlike, Tropical Universe
The tropical worlds of Pedro Varela (b. 1981 in Niterói, Brazil) look like they belong in a psychedelic dream or the pages of a storybook. And while the artist’s style builds on fairytale imagery and fantasy, his works also engage with history — namely, the 17th to 19th century “artist-scientists” who rendered an exotic vision of Tropical Paradise and the “New World” in their travels to Brazil. Blending Baroque still life, colonial iconography, and modern styles such as Neo-concretism, Varela engages with the past to create his own version of “paradise” that is at once alluring and cautionary.
Varela studied painting and philosophy at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage and holds a degree in printmaking from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. The artist has exhibited both at home and internationally, including in France, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Switzerland. His work is part of public collections at Museu de Arte do Rio anhttp://littlelimpstiff14u2.tumblr.com/d Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro. Varela currently lives and works in Petrópolis. In an interview with New City Brazil, the artist states that his recent work revolves around a “deep need to brood on the concept of the identity of the tropical world through the eye of the other.”
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