#ceciliabrunsonprojects

Katie van Scherpenberg, born in São Paulo in 1940, spent her formative years between Brazil and Europe, completed her studies in England, and a two-year scholarship was granted by the German government in 1961-63 that allowed her to study painting in Munich with Georg Brenninger (1909-1988) and in Salzburg with Oskar Kokoshcka (1816-1986). 

In 1968 she took the radical decision to move and settle in the remote Amazonian island of Ilha de Santana, where she spent most of the next 17 years. The absolute lack of professional art materials drove her to research ways to make natural pigments from soil. Speaking about this period her life, the artist recounted: ‘You could say that the river was, among other things, so much paint, for it contained a large quantity of pigments (ferrous oxides) from faraway places, and together with this paint it brought me a whole lot of information. In this sense, the river is somewhat like a painting…A river is like life, it is never stable, by its very nature - particularly the Amazon.’

Exploring the dynamics of the relationship between support and material, she prepared mixtures made with gesso, tempera, sawdust, wax, and other materials onto plywood boards, adding pigments onto the surface to create abstract works in which form and materiality are highlighted. Speaking about this period, van Scherpenberg stated that these works gave rise to ‘the idea of a succession of forms leading to the unknown, the fundamental, the sacred thing, and finally painting as a road to knowledge.’

Since August 2019, Katie van Scherpenberg has been exclusively represented by Cecilia Brunson Projects. 

Image: Katie van Scherpenberg, ‘Study,’ 1986