Lucia Laguna (b. 1941, Campos dos Goytacazes) studied at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, in the early 1990s, having previously had a career teaching Portuguese and literature at public schools. In the intervening years, Laguna has emerged as one of South America’s pre-eminent artists. Spanning painting and collage, her practice is deeply rooted in the close observation of her surroundings – made from her home and studio in Rio de Janeiro’s sprawling North Zone – that celebrate the lush ecosystems found in her home country of Brazil. Laguna typically divides her works into distinct groupings: Jardim (Garden), Estúdio (Studio), Paisagem (Landscape), and most recently Azulejo (Tiles). Through each series she explores the richly layered entanglement of the natural and urban worlds, reinterpreting her subjects intuitively with her own emphases and interventions – deconstructing, erasing and rebuilding – to conjure a sense of the continually evolving nature of her subject matter.
