“No head or tail”

Roberto Magalhães, from Rio de Janeiro, was first encouraged to paint by his father and his school teachers, who published caricatures of their classmates made by the artist in the weekly newspaper. Roberto's ironic and comical vision was already manifested in unconventional portraits, using the universe of dreams, fantasy and symbolism.

From 1963 to 1965 he participated in several exhibitions, becoming one of the main members of the group of young painters who put on the revolutionary exhibition "Opinião 65" at the MAM-RJ - Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. Together with Antonio Dias, Carlos Vergara, Rubens Guerchman and other avant-garde artists who stood out at the time, he brought a new visual language to the visual arts in Brazil.

In 1966, Roberto held a solo exhibition of watercolors at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1967, he moved to France and received an award at the 4th Paris Biennale. After two years, the artist returned to Brazil and began studying the occult and theosophy. When he discovered the existence of meditation and the Buddhist doctrine, he interrupted his artistic production to help build the Meditation Center of the Buddhist Society of Brazil, with which he maintained a close relationship for the next four years. There, during the first two years, instead of using paintbrushes, he worked with stones, cement and bricks. In the following two years, he dedicated himself exclusively to meditation.

Returning to the world of art, Magalhães produced the series "Esoteric Art", where one can see the influence of previous years on his vision as an artist. In 1975 he resumed his artistic life by exhibiting and teaching at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. With his own style, in addition to esoteric characteristics, his work also shows human figures, cities, animals and plants in fantastic images that expose everyday life with humor and irony. He uses several techniques: colored pencil, pen and ink, watercolor, India ink, oil, pastel, ecoline, etc.

In his subsequent exhibitions, esoteric symbols are no longer present. It is definitely Man with his instincts and expectations, his desires and feelings that appears portrayed in an imaginary universe that goes beyond the limits of reason. And in 1992, after several exhibitions, the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, in Rio de Janeiro, held the artist's largest exhibition to date, with a retrospective of the last 30 years.

In 2000, the Instituto Moreira Salles displayed part of the artist's vast collection of drawings in a traveling exhibition that lasted two years. Also in 2000, he began creating the Atípicos series, in which he lets a world of abstract images that had been accumulating inside the artist from the very beginning spill out onto the canvas.

Among the artist's most recent solo exhibitions are: "Delicadezas", at the Casa Galeria in Paraty in 2006; "Eu", at the Márcia Barroso do Amaral Art Gallery and Arte 21, both in Rio de Janeiro in 2007; "Otrebor – A outra margem", at the Caixa Cultural in Brasília in 2008, at the Caixa Cultural do Rio de Janeiro in 2008 and at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo in 2009; "Roberto Magalhães", at the Referências Art Gallery in Brasília in 2008, at the TNT Gallery in Rio de Janeiro in 2009, at the James Lisboa in São Paulo in 2010 and at the Art Museum of Beijing Fine Art in China in 2011; "Who am I, where did I come from, where am I going", at the Paço Imperial in Rio de Janeiro in 2012; "Viagem Astral", at the Galeria Marcia Barrozo do Amaral in Rio de Janeiro in 2013; "30 x Biennial - Transformations of Brazilian Art - Retrospective", in 2013; among others.