Claudio Tozzi
Brazilian Pop of the dictatorship years — comic panels, astronauts and Che, in flat hard colour.
Claudio Tozzi was born in Sao Paulo in 1944, trained as an architect, and made his name during the years of Brazil's military dictatorship with paintings that used the flat colour and panel structure of comics and advertising to carry a political charge that could not be stated openly. Multitudes, astronauts, bandits, Guevara and repeated figures in enamel and acrylic on board became his vocabulary. He was included in the Sao Paulo Biennial and has since worked extensively on large-scale public art and tiled murals for the city, including for its metro system.
A Brazilian market, with the works from the late 1960s and early 1970s leading it decisively — that period is the historically important one and the one institutions pursue. Later work is a broader and more modest field. Enamel and acrylic on board is the characteristic support and it warps, chips at the edges and shows any retouching against flat unmodulated colour, so condition matters. There is a print output in screenprint from the same period. Provenance through documented Brazilian collections and exhibitions carries weight.
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