Nunca

São Paulo, 1983

Since the mid-2000s, Francisco Rodrigues da Silva, better known as Nunca, has been executing large-scale drawings and paintings on the urban space. Part of a celebrated generation of graffiti artists, including Os Gêmeos, Spetto and Ninca Pandolfo, Nunca started working in São Paulo before taking his art to other major cities worldwide. His presence on the institutional scene and contemporary art market has helped strengthen the debate, reception and public appreciation of urban art.

His striking figurative interventions evoke aspects of Brazil’s past and a graphic repertoire in which the regional collides with a current cosmopolitan imaginary. Traditional populations, people of mixed race and a diversity of customs and traditions are blended with references to pop and mass culture, everyday life, racial and class conflicts, competing interests and clashing territories.

The artist’s emphasis on diversity extends to his use of form. A visual polyphony of vibrant colors fills fields juxtaposed with black-rimmed and hatched drawings that lend scale and volume to the theme in hand. Based on a preliminary sketch, the works tend to be adapted in loco, where they reach their final form. For Frestas, Sorocaba provided the inspiration for a new work. Inaugurated at the Triennial, the conditions and permanence of the enormous mural in Colonel Fernando Prestes Square are submitted to the dynamic of the city, both during and after the exhibition.

[D.M]