Paulo Monteiro

Paulo Monteiro’s work turns on a lifelong reconciliation of painting, drawing, and sculpture, three forms he treats as continuous states of the same inquiry. Since his early experiments in the found wood precariously assembled into compositions that suggested both motion and collapse, he has built a body of work animated by materiality, edge, and the expressive life of objects. In the late 1980s and 1990s, his sculptures and drawings shifted focus to explore the expressive power of the line – a theme he went on to pursue across various mediums in the years that followed. His canvases push paint to their borders, creating forceful physical limits, while his three-dimensional work carries the sensibility of painting. A palette vibrating between predominantly cool and warm tones, dark blues, and a variety of reds creates an interlocking depth and almost strident contrast. At the same time, whites and grays offer a tactility akin to that of his drawings. 

In recent years, rope, cardboard, aluminum, and clay have entered his practice; with clay especially, Monteiro splays and squeezes slabs open until an animated interior reveals. He carries this same physical unfolding to the canvas, working outward from the center. The possibility of the line runs throughout, never completely straight, pulling in both directions at once in a Deleuzian sense, existing between the affirmation and negation of space. This tension extends to his constellations, configurations of works positioned in careful relation, where the physicality of the object becomes the subject, alongside bronze and lead casts bearing the imprint of his own hand, and what Monteiro calls the drive to “bring life to something lifeless.” 

Paulo Monteiro (b. 1961, São Paulo, Brazil) lives and works in São Paulo. 

The artist’s works have been featured prominently in exhibitions such as Atrás da superfície, Mendes Wood DM, Casa Iramaia, São Paulo (2026); Soglia/Common, La Società delle Api, Rome (2026); MAM São Paulo na Pinacoteca do Ceará: figura e paisagem, palavra e imagem, Pinacoteca do Ceará, Fortaleza (2025); Ao redor da distância, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2024); The Color of Distance, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2024); Undefined Inclusions, Pace Gallery, New York (2023); Paulo Monteiro: Linha do Corpo, Instituto Ling, São Paulo (2023); The Middle Distance, Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp (2022); Colors without a place, Tomio Koyama, Tokyo (2022); Paulo Monteiro: The Two Sides of An Empty Line, Lévy Gorvy, New York (2021); The Empty Side, Zeno X, Antwerp (2018); Coleção MAC Niterói: arte contemporânea no Brasil, MAC Niterói, Rio de Janeiro (2017); The outside of distance, MISAKO & ROSEN and Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo (2017); Building Material: Process and Form in Brazilian Art, Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles (2017); The inside of distance, Office Baroque, Brussels (2016); The inside of distance, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2015); Casa 7, Pivô, São Paulo (2015); Empty House Casa Vazia, Luhring Augustine, New York (2015); Paintings on Paper, David Zwirner, New York (2014); Where Were You, Lisson Gallery, London (2014); 22nd São Paulo Art Biennial (1994) and 18th São Paulo Art Biennial (1985).

His works are in numerous permanent collections, such as Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP), São Paulo; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo; Museu de Arte Contemporânea; de São Paulo (MAC-SP), São Paulo; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-RJ), Rio de Janeiro; Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói (MAC Niterói), Rio de Janeiro; Start Museum, Shanghai.