Sergio Camargo

Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Ltd., New York
The 24 Collection, Miami (acquired from the above)
Private Collection, Miami (acquired from the above)
Thence by descent to the present owner 

New York, Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Ltd., Sergio de Camargo: White Reliefs, May 1969, no. 45

The panel is in very good condition. It displays an aged painted surface with a paint layer that is tightly bound. The top of the flat circular faces of the dowels have been recently inpainted where minor paint loss occurred. Minor wear can be seen along the edges of the square panel. The seams between the panel and the dowels are visible due to dimensional movement in the wood, which is typical of the artist's work. Minor surface soiling is present on the surface. No significant losses, scratches or abrasions are evident. The dowels are well secured to the panel and the panel is structurally sound. (This condition report has been prepared courtesy of Wilson Conservation, LLC)
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Sergio Camargo studied under the tutelage of modernist luminaries Emilio Pettoruti and Lucio Fontana at the Academia Privada de Altamira in Buenos Aires.  A brief sojourn in Paris quickly followed, where he studied philosophy and sculpture at the Sorbonne, where Camargo met Brancusi, Arp, Auricoste, and Vantongerloo. Upon his return to Brazil in 1950, Camargo encountered a country thoroughly enmeshed in the utopian manifestations of modernism and its impact on the artistic production of the new generation of Brazilian artists, including Lygia Clark, Helio Oiticica, and Abraham Palatnik, among others who were fully promoting the Constructivist and Neo-Constructivist movements via their manifestos and art production (Maria Alice Milliet, "From Concretist Paradox to Experimental Exercise of Freedom," Brazil: Body & Soul, New York, 2001, p. 391).

Simplistic in its construction, Relief No. 246 (1969) is representative of Sergio Camargo's signature approach to a sculptural practice simultaneously rooted in the constructivist methodology of the first half of the twentieth century and in the informal and abstract geometric tendencies that defined Brazil's post war vanguard artists of the Concrete and Neoconcrete art movements. More importantly, it is in the series of the wood-cone Reliefs that came to dominate his oeuvre by the 1960s, where Camargo sets the tone of his unique visual idiom: “rhythms of organized growth are movingly suggested in his wooden reliefs” (SIGNALS, Dec. 1964-Jan.1965, p. 3). In a calculating sensory experiment, the artist deliberately places wooden-dowels of varying sizes, concentrated within the center of the relief resulting in a parallel interplay of light, volume, tactility, logic, chaos.