“Color”

Luiz Zerbini began his artistic career in the late 1970s. His work spans painting, sculpture, installation, photography, text production, and video. With a rich and luminous palette, Zerbini develops an exploratory approach to painting, uniting political and ecological issues of the Global South with the meticulous execution of textures, patterns, and figures. By portraying foliage, forests, and dense vegetation, the artist gives prominence to the observation of nature and translates ecosystem interactions into pictorial language. His critical stance is deeply linked to the Brazilian context, revisiting the history of national art—from landscape tradition to representations of collective identity. Through dynamic distributions of visual information, his compositions create hypnotic atmospheres, governed by tension, coexistence, overlapping, and proliferation, which structure his paintings and monotypes.

He held his first solo exhibition in 1982 at Casa do Brasil in Madrid, Spain. A member of the Generation 80, Zerbini expanded his practice from painting to sculpture, video, drawing, and photography, receiving the grand prize from the critics in the visual arts category from the São Paulo Association of Art Critics (APCA) in 1995. In the same year, he formed the Chelpa Ferro group with Barrão, Sérgio Mekler, and Chico Neves, developing works that integrate sculpture, technological installations, and electronic music.

Among his main solo exhibitions are: "Observations: Luiz Zerbini in Conversation with Frank Walter", Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel | Jardins, São Paulo, Brazil (2025); "Vagarosa Luminescência Voadora", Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil (2025); "Afinidades III – Cochichos", MON – Museu Oscar Niemeyer (2024); "Paisagens ruminadas", CCBB Brasília and CCBB Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2024); "A mesma história nunca é a mesma", MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo, Brazil (2022); "Intuitive Ratio", South London Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2019); as well as "Campo Expandido", Oi Futuro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2020); "Anos 1990", Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil (2021); "Monotypes", Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil (2017) and "Love", MAM Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2012).

She has also participated in important group exhibitions, including: "Exposition Générale", Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, France (2025); "Fullgás – Visual Arts and the 1980s in Brazil", CCBB Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2024); "Lugar de estar – o legado de Burle Marx", MAM Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2024); "Siamo Foresta", Triennale Milano, Milan, Italy (2023); "Nous les arbres", Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China (2021); "MECARÕ – Amazonia in the Petitgas Collection", MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain, Montpellier, France (2020); "Cities in Dust", Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel | Carpintaria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2020); "Nous les Arbres", Fondation Cartier, Paris, France (2019) and "Campo", Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2019).

Zerbini's work is part of essential public collections, such as the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, France; Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; MAM Rio de Janeiro and MAM São Paulo, Brazil; MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo, Brazil; Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway; Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil; and the Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, United States.