Iuri Sarmento

Iuri Sarmento, born in 1969, is a Brazilian painter who lives and works in São Paulo. He graduated in fine arts from the Guignard School in Belo Horizonte and spent many years in Salvador, where he absorbed influences from Portuguese tilework, a recurring element in his work.

Sarmento's career is marked by exhibitions across various states of Brazil, as well as internationally in Spain, Portugal, Argentina, and most recently, a solo show in Paris at the Agnes Monplaisir gallery. His paintings establish a direct connection to the Portuguese visual heritage, evoking images that resonate within our cultural and affective memory.

The artist is known for his pop-baroque compositions that celebrate excess and saturation. The juxtaposition of unlikely colors and a multitude of textures and details - glossy and matte, stripes and dots, flowers and geometric figures - create an exceptional vocabulary of pictorial effects.

Iuri Sarmento is part of a generation of artists from Bahia who gained national resonance in the 90s, thanks to an effective promotion strategy led by the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia. The curious figures in his works refer back to the great master Sante Scaldaferri and deeply engage with northeastern popular art. At the same time, he stands out as a creative and distinctive disciple of renowned artists from the 80s generation, such as Leonílson, Beatriz Milhazes, and Adriana Varejão.

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Photo: Arte Hall
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