Through an exquisite articulation of light and atmospheric conditions, Untitled, from the Deserto Modelo series exemplifies São Paulo artist Lucas Arruda’s investigations into the Romantic Sublime. Evoking the academic tradition of the landscape genre, Arruda’s persistent visualisation of the horizon line at the precipice of abstraction is a vividly contemporary approach to this celebrated theme within the canon of art history. Executed in 2016, the present work marries sea with sky and the real with the imagined, embodying a highly idealised seascape at the cusp of dawn or dusk. The artist describes his keen interest in the cyclical interplay of light throughout the day: “I started thinking about a narrative, for instance that passage between dawn and dusk, and created a sequence that examined those changes. I became really interested in that moment when it becomes completely dark before daybreak, that moment when you feel lost and disoriented. It’s really an attempt to measure the body’s relationship with different t.mes s of day, but without a human presence” (L. Arruda in conversation with A. Rigamonti di Cutò, ‘Lucas Arruda: The only reason to call my works landscapes is cultural’, Studio International, September 2017, online). Negotiating the boundaries of abstraction, Arruda’s landscapes explore sensations of atmosphere suspended within the medium of paint; in turn, his investigations suggest the romantic grandeur of nature, and our inherent inferiority in relation to it.

Executed entirely from his imagination, the compositions of Arruda’s seascapes do not have any connection to real places, nor do they signify any trace of human presence. Their unexpectedly intimate scale is of critical importance to the artist: “Every aspect of my painting has been worked out with great precision, including the scale, the choice of paints, the shape of the canvas… It’s more powerful to contain something as immense as a seascape in a tighter scale. It increases and concentrates the radiation, and the surrounding frequency…. Another aspect is that it’s always a question of subtracting or adding paint… Somet.mes s, the horizon line is evoked simply by wiping the brush or a cloth, so that the mark that discreetly identifies the image as a seascape is produced by the removal of paint, rather than by an active gesture” (L. Arruda cited in: Ibid.).

Arruda’s repertoire consistently reflects upon the genre of landscape painting, and the intimate scale of his work recalls small religious panels of fifteenth-century Flemish painting, as well as the modest scale of seventeenth century landscapes, such as those of Claude Lorrain. However, Arruda’s innate ability to paint the highly ephemeral atmospheric conditions of the sky is undeniably reminiscent of J.M.W. Turner’s magnificent, brooding late seascapes, such as Snow Storm – Steam boat off a harbour’s mouth (c. 1842) or Lifeboat and manby apparatus going off to a stranded vessel making signal (blue lights) of distress (c. 1831). Writer and critic Oliver Basciano further explores this connection between Arruda and his Old Master predecessor: “There is a similar turbulence to the brushwork, a similar invocation of the apparently infinite power of nature, a similar feeling of impotence provoked in the viewer by that thought. Yet Arruda’s scenes are lonelier than those of the historical artists…. Turner and Constable gradually remove the figure in their work…. Arruda goes a step further. Apparently no one lives in or ventures to the places he paints (except, in a way, us); in fact, the materiality of Arruda’s landscape is all but disregarded in favour of atmosphere” (O. Basciano, ‘Lucas Arruda’, Art Review, October 2017, online).

While Arruda’s work builds upon the masterpieces of landscape throughout art history, the uniformity and seriality of his work is also consistent with the silent perfection of Giorgio Morandi’s still lifes, through their nuanced shifts in colour, tone, scale and composition. Arruda himself asserts, “If anything, I identify more with Morandi, in the sense that I always use the same structure – a landscape with a horizon line. There’s a combination of mathematical and metaphysical impulses in my work. In a way, the only reason to call my works landscapes is cultural: it’s simply that viewers automatically register my format as a landscape, although none of the images can be traced to a geographic location. It’s the idea of a landscape rather than a real place, perhaps in that sense there’s a similarity with the late Turners” (L. Arruda cited in: Op. cit.).

Arruda’s work is held in the permanent collects ions of international institutions, including The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Rubell Family collects ion, Miami. Transcendent in its articulation of light and mesmeric in its atmospheric depiction of the sublime, Untitled, from the Deserto Modelo series from 2016 exhibits Arruda’s radical and innately contemporary attitude towards the historical genre of landscape painting.