The Paul Mahder Gallery is proud to present the U.S. Premiere of new paintings by internationally recognized Brazilian artist Antonio Veronese. Now living in Paris, he has recently exhibited at the United Nations, Art Paris 2009, Galerie Celal – Paris, and solo exhibits at the History Museum – Domaine National de Saint-Cloud, Barbizon Village of Painters and the Museum of Asago Village, Japan.

Please join us for hors d’oeuvres, wine, good conversation and great art!

To RSVP,  reply to this email (paul@paulmahdergallery.com) with your name and the names of your guests or call (415) 474-7707 Parking available on street and in JCC parking garage on California and Walnut

About the artist:  

Antonio Veronese was born of Italian parents in Brotas, a small town near São Paulo in 1953. At an early age he was obsessed with drawing faces and he’s been painting them ever since. Now he’s a master painter. For more than sixteen years he taught art and painting to young prisoners in Rio de Janeiro. He believed art was a “drug” that could psychologically rehabilitate these disenfranchised children. And it did. Over 50% of the children he worked with were rehabilitated into society. Because of his work he was invited to the Commission on Human Rights at the United Nations, and received the highest honor from the Supreme Court of Justice of Brazil.  

It is the remarkable struggle and work of Antonio Veronese to reduce violence against youth in Rio de Janeiro.  
- Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State

The project of rehabilitation through art is a fascinating, rich human experience. I think Antonio Veronese’s life is a lesson for us all, because he is proving that Art can be a path of liberation for those in precarious living situations. The work of Antonio Veronese is a cultural heroic effort to ensure that children in prison regain a sense of dignity through art. I think this is a beautiful experience that we need to communicate to all.
- Francisco Welfort, Minister of Culture, Brazil

Veronese remarks, 'The image of a hedonistic Rio de Janeiro, all samba and soccer, has become a cliché and our intellectuals have become our worst natural disaster. Armored cars have become a status symbol, but a society that suffers from fear every day is in defeat.”  

For such words and paintings that exposed entrenched official violence and gave voice to victimized children, Veronese was personally threatened with violence. He ultimately had to flee to save his life. He relocated to Paris where he has continued to show in more than 30 art exhibitions, exhibiting in many museums, appearing in multiple public and private collections.  

Veronese continues to paint faces, yet his work is deeper than just children in Brazil’s prisons. For him the face is “inexhaustible, it expresses such a variety of emotions… a Pandora’s box”.  

It’s true that Veronese’s constant proximity with these children in distress has strongly influenced his painting, but what emerges is deeper ... In fact, I find it bewildering that Veronese has successfully painted our inability to face life and the world today. That is why his work is beyond fashion, that's why it's a classic. Absent in our time, poisoned by the galloping abstractionism, nihilism and conceptual art, Veronese is someone who draws the face of our time.  This is precisely what Veronese is doing.
- Francisco Brennand, painter and sculptor