Julião Sarmento - Arena

Julião Sarmento
Arena
28 October – 3 December 2021

Pilar Corrias presents an exhibition of never before seen paintings by Julião Sarmento, titled Arena, which will open at the gallery’s Savile Row space next Thursday, 28 October.

The iconography and titles of each of the works, the last he made before his death in May 2021, are loosely based on drawings by Francisco de Goya, seen by Sarmento at the Museo del Prado in 2019.

Abstracted from their original context and reimagined on a grand scale, the figures in Sarmento’s paintings offer visions of human life by turns haunting, comic and triumphant, while also disrupting a number of key art historical notions, namely, those of authorship, hermeneutics and the gaze.