Fifth Street Painting PO5.65
2005
Gouache on paper.
254 x 330 mm
(10 x 13 inches).
New York 1959 ~
Caio Fonseca has become a leading exponent of contemporary abstract painting. His style has developed out of the classical tradition of the early twentieth century. He is in line with the past rather than the high technology of today. He is the son of two artists. His father, Gonzalo Fonseca (1922-1997), is one of Latin America's leading modernist sculptors. His mother, Elizabeth Fonseca, from New York, is also an accomplished artist. Caio grew up in New York City and later spent long summers in Pietrasanta on the Tuscan coast of Italy. He purchased an old marble workshop there, beneath the famous Carrara quarries, and converted it into a studio. He now divides his time between this studio and the one on East Fifth Street, Manhattan.
After a year at Brown University, Fonseca joined his older brother, Bruno, in Barcelona where they studied with Augusto Torres (1913-1992). Caio spent five years in Barcelona (1978-1983) completing his formal training as a painter. This sojourn was followed by a further six years abroad, working on his own, first in Pietrasanta (1985-1989) and then for two years in Paris. During this time he concentrated on the traditional practice of painting and drawing hundreds of still lifes, figures and landscapes. Thus, his work developed far from the trends of mainstream American art at this period. When Caio returned to New York in the early 1990s, he was still a representational artist. However, he did move on to abstraction almost immediately.
Like Paul Klee, Caio is a visual artist and gifted musician. He has studied the works of Bach, Brahams and Schoenberg and can often be heard playing the piano in a room next to his studio. He is very conscious of the similarities between his techniques for structuring his paintings and the compositional organization used by composers. However, he remains firm about his paintings being completely abstract. His attitude reflects early twentieth century ideals of art: not to imitate any real object or scene but to emphasize the reality of the painting's flat surface and the materials used.
The titles of Caio's paintings and drawings divide them into two groups. These titles simply indicate where he executed a particular work - either in Pietrasanta or at the Fifth Street studio in Manhattan. Any piece of art entitled Tenth Street indicates an earlier period when he was set up in that street. Fonseca's working process begins with a gessoed surface, whether canvas or paper. He covers this with a selection of water-based pigments. The quick-drying polymer paints, which he prefers to oils, make it easier for him to accumulate multiple layers without one bleeding into another. With the first application of colour, he determines the range of what is possible in the final composition but relies on 'last-minute' decision making as he paints the upper layer.1
1. Jacquelyn D. Serwer, Contemporary Abstract Painting and the Work of Caio Fonseca, exh. cat. Ben Brown Fine Arts, London, 17th October - 16th December, 2005, p.17.
