In October 2018, Galerie Lelong & Co. presented an inaugural selection of works on paper by the Argentinian artist, Sarah Grilo. For many visitors, she was a discovery. This new exhibition focuses on her canvases from the 1980s and 1990s; compositions that incorporate graffiti, figures and letters or extracts of words. In them, we can feel the hectic pace of the city, the flashing of advertising hoardings. The symbols buried in the rivulets of liquid paint form a sort of palimpsest where we can attempt to decipher the details of daily life, a date, an address, a phone number amidst a crooked ensemble of arrows and geometric figures. We can almost hear the noises of the city, see the lights and their reflections, the work bathed in the melancholy of dripping colour.
Pintura en rosa (1983), oil on canvas / Galerie Lelong & Co., Paris
Sarah Grilo is a major figure of Latin-American art from the second half of the 20th century. She has worked in Buenos Aires, Paris, New York and Madrid. Her work has been the subject of a number of one-man shows in the US, Latin America and Europe: at the national fine arts museum in Buenos Aires, the fine arts museum in Caracas, the Institut de Arte Contemporáneo of Lima, the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum in New York, the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) in Miami, the American Art Museum in Washington DC, the Nelson Rockefeller collection in New York, the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid. Recently, in 2017, Grilo’s work featured in the "Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction" exhibition at the MoMA in New York.
Untitled (1986), mixed media on paper / Galerie Lelong & Co., Paris