Luiza Gottschalk

A first reaction to Luiza Gottschalk's paintings is the feeling of energy in motion. Unsurprisingly, as the artist's first passion was dance and later, theatrical performance. The choreography of movement in the act of painting itself produces results in flowing gestural brushstrokes, using dense or subtle color: fluctuating, evanescent, rhythm betraying secrets within.

Mysterious figures, human and animal, suggested or hinted at, populate imaginary landscapes retained from memories or dreams. Many recall her childhood away from urban centers, in the Mantiqueira mountain range, a bucolic country environment between Minas Gerais and São Paulo. Each painting reflects inner peace, or turbulence, emoting powerful personal agitation or tranquility. Paint is poured, applied with definitive brushstrokes, and sometimes parts of the canvas are dyed by submersion. Gottschalk thus creates images that are mostly undefined, but that awaken our deepest feelings, emotions accumulated over time, hidden, which return vividly to the surface.

Sarina Tang

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Luiza Gottschalk (1984, São Paulo, Brazil) grew up in the Serra da Mantiqueira. Her paintings are contextualized around two main axes: Theater and Nature.

Nature arises from vivid childhood memories in the forest—she had to travel 70 km every day to get to school. This experience unfolds in layers where color, texture, and emotion collide. As the artist works and reworks her compositions, her paintings become progressively more experimental. Her work investigates what she calls overflow, a processual approach emerging from the continuous use of materials and procedures. By placing loosely woven fabrics saturated with liquid paint onto the canvas, she creates organic color gradients and pathways shaped by the natural movement of water. The fabrics are reused for years, allowing time to act upon the process in which images emerge from the making itself—a painting is never planned in advance. The result is a balance between intuitive gesture and formal investigation, which builds depth while establishing an intimate and physical connection between the artist and her medium.

The other conceptual axis of her work comes from her relationship with the Theater; an actress, director, and set designer, Gottschalk had her first language experience as a creative artist for the theater company Os Satyros. For 10 years, she developed practices and procedures related to the stage and audience interaction, as this group was one of the pioneers of performative theater in Brazil.

Luiza Gottschalk's artistic universe lives between these two conceptual axes, which ultimately materialize as exhibitions that operate at the intersection of artistic languages, using performative, theatrical, and architectural artifices to construct each show as an artwork in itself.

Having graduated in Performing Arts from the Célia Helena theater school (2001), in Fine Arts from FAAP (2014), and holding a postgraduate degree in Visual Arts from FAAP (2018), Luiza won the 46th and 47th Annual Arts awards at the Museum of Brazilian Art (MAB). Notable among her solo exhibitions are SOL (SLAG&RX, New York, 2026); SOL (Parque das Ruínas, Rio de Janeiro, 2024); Ensaio Aberto (Praça das Artes, São Paulo, 2019 - curated by Ana Paula Cohen); and Clareira (Museu Nacional da República, Brasília/DF, 2022). Also noteworthy are the group exhibitions Artists at Work (ISCP-NY, New York, 2020), Práticas Artísticas Contemporâneas: formação continuada (MAB-FAAP, São Paulo, 2018), Reverberações Surrealistas (MAB-FAAP, São Paulo/SP, 2024), and Sublime Spirit (Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York/NY, 2024). She has participated in international art residencies at ISCP-NY, SWA, and 14C in New York (2020, 2021, 2023, and 2025), Siena Art Institute in Siena, Italy (2016), and Agora Collective in Berlin (2012).