Mendes Wood DM X Patricia Leite At The Istituzione Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice
Istituzione Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa is pleased to present, for the first time in the exhibition spaces of Palazzetto Tito, a South American artist: Brazilian painter Patricia Leite. With a career spanning decades, Leite is now being honored with her first solo exhibition to be hosted by an Italian institution.
This exhibition is part of an ongoing series curated by Milovan Farronato, dedicated to leading figures in international painting, with the aim of offering an in-depth perspective on the most significant voices in contemporary art. The exhibition brings together works created specifically for this occasion in the artist’s São Paulo studio, offering a comprehensive view of her most current artistic explorations.
Curated by Milovan Farronato, Cold Water reflects on central themes in Leite’s practice. The title pays homage to a painting included in the exhibition while also evoking a particular state of mind – an instant of sudden clarity, vulnerability, and awakening – akin to the invigorating shock of cold water on the skin, returning us to what is essential, raw, and immediate.
In Cold Water, Patricia Leite brings to Venice landscapes that belong not only to Brazil but also to an interior realm shaped by silence, pauses, and diffused light. Her canvases do not depict places; they dream of them. A vertical waterfall becomes a thought descending slowly; a cave opens like a refuge from which to observe the world from afar; fireworks tremble on the water like blurred memories.
At Palazzetto Tito – a space that seems to preserve ancient voices and empty rooms ready to receive – Leite’s paintings settle gently, allowing each image to become a threshold, a breath, a suspension of time. In Lampadario, Leite transforms a constellation of lights into an uncertain form, suspended between abstraction and figuration. The luminous points, arranged in a fragile and irregular geometry, evoke both a domestic object and a natural phenomenon, as if a chandelier were dissolving into a galaxy – or vice versa.
The exhibition was organized with the support of Mendes Wood DM and Thomas Dane Gallery.
Exhibition runs from May 6 to July 27, 2025
Istituzione Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa
Sestiere Dorsoduro, 2826
Venice
Istituzione Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa website
www.mendeswooddm.com
@mendeswooddm
