The project is an immersion in the rescue of human ancestral knowledge, recalling the art of original peoples who painted using only the light of fire in caves. These pieces are a personal iconography; expressing through color, form, increasing depth and dimensionality, a contemporary expression manifested into artistic interventions on murals,vases, hammock, fabrics and countless other possibilities of the bond that links us and the world we inhabit; a world that we have transformed throughout the millennia.

One of the main functions of artivism is exactly to provoke the spectator to reflect, and to create a constant engagement with the artistic process and the art in itself, and not just passively appreciate the work. Gathered in these interventions, the works of Duda Penteado consist of a visual pedagogy of the highest order, impacting the public on essential human concerns.

Because he considers himself both American and Brazilian, the artist is fond of saying that he lives in voluntary exile in America. So, he was shocked to his core, as so many of us were, that his new home country was so viciously attacked by what Osama Bin Laden’ inflicted on New
York City on September 11, 2001! As an artist, he had to confront this brutality in his work, which appears to process the attack on the World Trade Center Towers through an historical lens, one that recalls both the brutal assault by Hitler’s bombers (at the behest of Franco) on the Basque town Guernica that resulted in the destruction of the Spanish town on April 26, 1937, and Pablo Picasso’s response to it. Elements of Picasso’s eponymous Guernica (1937) would permeate Penteados’s own work for a time, especially the scream and the broken horse’s head.

So strong was Picasso’s influence that it took Penteado several years to reconcile the impact of this giant, his masterpiece, and the atrocities that forged their association.

His process is revealed in his public mural production, for which he invited community participation. A more ample vision begins to form as graffiti and other street artists make their contributions both to those events and to his own evolution. Street art begins to shape his social visual perspective, analogous in so many ways to the work of Graffiti Artist Samo, while the philosophy underpinning Joseph Albers’ series Homage to the Square emerges in Penteado’s canvases, directly or by osmosis, as a solution for hanging the subject of his work, which may appear to be either looking into a cave (Crossroads, 2021) or out of it (Footprint, 2021).

The artist’s Brazilian roots are omnipresent. The three major legacies of Brazilian society, the European, the African, and the indigenous communities each play their part. Echoes of Africa
(Afro descendants), Native Brazilian prehistoric rock drawings, the time he has spent living with the native communities of Xingu, Mato Grosso, and Rio Negro, Amazonia, and, of course, his Portuguese ancestry all resonate in his oeuvre.

His work reverberates with the environment of the carnival, its exuberance, colors, and the sounds and freedom of the Samba, a space of extreme happiness where everyone participates, regardless of class, religion or sexual preference, where not only the living participate, but where even the ancestors are present, portrayed in the costumes and paraphernalia, by skulls, dancing skeletons and ghosts! Yet, the artist’s work also reflects the Brazilian legacy of the Bossa Nova in multiple areas, with details offering calm reflection and sophisticated nuances in otherwise gestural work.

I would say that Duda Penteado has found his “Mojo”! In his latest work he channels the metaphoric ancestral legacy of the spirts or souls of Pablo Picasso, Joseph Albers and Jean- Michel Basquiat. In Angels in the Night (2021), an anthropomorphic black image fitted with quasi transparent wings appear to be surrounded by fragments or debris, with echoes or residuals of 9/11. In Crossroads (2021), a mixed media work, Penteado suspends or hangs his subject with a net of graffiti, achieved by multiple continuous lines that linger on the surface of the canvas on which he inserts the graffiti image of his “bird of revelation.” His monumental (8 x 6 feet) canvas, Becoming One (2021), a tour de force of vibrant color, evokes the sound and celebration of the Samba, with nuances of the Bossa Nova reflected throughout, notably in the petals of the flowers.

It has been my great pleasure to witness the steady artistic development of Duda Penteado. His latest works reveal the legacies, environment, and experiences that produce elements akin to musical notes in his opus.

Reynold C. Kerr
Art Critic, Curator, Writer, and Lecturer