Birth 1962 1967
First exhibition 1968
Architecture 1971
Rome 1973 1974 1974-1975 1975-1978
a personal crisis 1979 1980-1981
Personal changes 1982 1983-1985
Pérola 1986-1987
Flora 1988-1990
Geometries 1991 1992-1996
Red 1997-1999
Ochre, terracotta, greys... 2000 2001-2002 2003-2005
Year of Brazil in France 2005-2006 2007-2009
chronology
Gianguido Bonfanti was born into an Italian family in São Paulo on 5 October 1948, being the first born child of Bianca and Gianfranco Bonfanti. Although they lived in Rio de Janeiro, the family moved to the city of São Paulo for two years due to Gianfranco’s work. In 1950 his first sister Anna Claudia was born. The family then returned to Rio for good. In 1957 his younger sister, Renata Bonfanti, was born. Always a restless child, he spent his early infancy in the Italian colony of Rio de Janeiro.
Parallel to his school studies, he began his apprenticeship as an artist, frequenting the studio of Poty Lazzarotto, a colleague of his father at the Escola de Belas Artes of Rio de Janeiro. A friend of the family until the end of his life, Poty became his master. During the apprenticeship, they travelled frequently to Curitiba, the capital of the state of Parana (Poty’s native town), and to Minas Gerais, where historic towns such as Ouro Preto and Mariana provided the subject material for Gianguido and Poty to draw a wide selection of town-houses and landscapes from these small Baroque towns.
He exhibited for the first time alongside other young artists in the Santa Rosa Gallery in Rio de Janeiro. That same year in the company of a couple of friends of his parents, he visited Italy, making contact with the Italian branch of the family.
He commenced the architecture course at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and worked in architects’ offices as a trainee. He would always maintain his admiration and a repressed desire for architecture. Very often, he thought nostalgically of the Renaissance as a lost opportunity for bringing together painting and architecture.
Under the auspices of the Italian Consulate of Rio de Janeiro, he obtained a transfer to a faculty of architecture in Rome. He travelled with his first wife, Leonarda Musumeci, with whom he had been living since the previous year. On his arrival, the desire to paint became imperative and Bonfanti never even enrolled for his course of architecture. Instead, he headed for the Academia dei Belle Arti, where he successfully passed an entrance exam, and started to attend the Academy’s live model studio and metal etching classes. This move marked an important change in his life, determining his future career. During this process, a chance encounter left its mark on him: an exhibition of etchings in metal from the 1920s and 30s by Pablo Picasso, in a small basement gallery in the Parthenon square in Rome. The purity of the lines over the impeccably white background and the capacity for graphic synthesis of these highly expressive etchings were a never forgotten lesson.
On returning to Brazil, he had his first individual exhibition: “G. Bonfanti,” in the Centro Cultural Lume gallery, in Rio de Janeiro, with the drawings produced during his sojourn in Rome.
The sensitive calligraphy runs along fluent lines. Between brusque interruptions, black comas dot a never-ending and obsessive discourse. The pen lives the “frenesi” of piercing the paper. The draftsman already announces the engraver, where the lines are not just a path to follow. They are passages where life leaves its marks. At times the line splits into threads. It narrates an endless story. And keeps in the air the mutilation of the beings: oscillating, fluctuating and perplexed figures; puppets of an inexorable dependence; “mobiles” of meat in a voracious game, so archaic and foreseen.
(Flavio L. Motta. In the exhibition catalogue G. Bonfanti no Centro Cultural Lume.
Rio de Janeiro, 23.07.1973).
A young draftsman manipulating the line with extraordinary boldness and sensibility, within an obviously traditional conceptualization of this expressive medium, endowed, however, with vitality and imagination that really shun the common place, a master of technical resources and above all a poetic force that is rare to find in such a young artist. This then is Bonfanti, whose art struck me at once, and never for a moment did I doubt that here before my eyes was an authentic and unquestionable artistic vocation.
The critic that takes a delight in attacking the periphery of the problem, pointing to sources and glimpsing influences, will surely talk, in relation to Bonfanti, of the old masters to whom he is inclined, to Bruegel and Bosh and who knows else. What is more important, however, is to trace meticulously the outline of one of his figures, sometimes exotic, at others bizarre or tragic or comic, to accompany patiently the contour of a leg or arm, with their surprising variations of sensibility and mood depicted so well on the white surface of the paper. Few times have I seen a more sensitive and expressive line than that of this new artist, who is furthermore a fertile poet of weird imagination, focussing on the absurdity of the world in extremely stark scenes – a world of unstable balance, so precarious that at any moment it can be thrown into confusion and topple.
Yes, “those that do not love painting for itself give great importance to hanging pictures on the wall” – and it will be difficult not to be affected by the subject material of Bonfanti, a creator of visual myths that are full of interest, including psychological interest; it is necessary, however, to see these drawings exactly as they are – valuable specimens of a highly difficult art, with its own rhythm, a texture sui generis, an unusual composition, so grand in execution and, above all, so pure, that they even suggest music.
(José Roberto Teixeira Leite. In the exhibition catalogue G. Bonfanti no Centro Cultural Lume.
Rio de Janeiro, 30.08.1973).
Enriched by the two years he lived in Italy, Bonfanti returned to Brazil at a time of political and social turbulence: the 1970s ran its course under the iron rule of the military dictatorship. In such a scenario, cultural production is, in itself, a focus of resistance. Looking for the right space, Bonfanti began to attend the Escolinha de Arte do Brasil (EAB) to further his studies in etching, under the supervision of Marília Rodrigues. The EAB, founded by Augusto Rodrigues (an artist and a friend of his father), was an important centre of resistance, training teachers and artists. Augusto Rodrigues introduced the teaching of art-education in Brazil following the theoretical guidelines of Herbert Read in England.
Individual exhibition: “Desenhos de G. Bonfanti,” at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Paraná, in Curitiba.
During this period, Bonfanti earned important recognition, receiving four awards: 1st place in the Drawing category of the 3ª Mostra de Artes Visuais in the City of Niterói (RJ); award in the Drawing category in the 31º Salão Paranaense, and the Isenção de Júri award at the 23º Salão de Arte Moderna of Rio de Janeiro. The following year he received an award in the Drawing category of the 2º Concurso Nacional de Artes Plásticas.
In 1975, under the influence of Poty, who was busily engaged as an illustrator, particularly books, such as the novels by Guimarães Rosa, Bonfanti decided to try his hand at this experience for the next three years of his life.
Gianguido seems to want to involve us in the exploration of a dark territory, through a pedagogically constructed path. And what makes the proposal even more diabolic is the submission of the horror of his mutilations to an immense naivety. This atmosphere is ensured by the child characters and games and toys (marbles, swings), involving even some monstrous half-men. The terrifying and the soothing are brought together within an austere and courteous Victorian decor.
(Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro. In exhibition catalogue Desenhos de G. Bonfanti no Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Paraná. São Paulo, October 1974).
He illustrated various newspapers and magazines, including Pasquim, Ele & Ela, Jornal do Brasil and O Globo.
In 1976, he experienced a personal crisis, which made itself felt, first of all, in his artistic production: while staying at a friend’s country house, he came across a book on tropical diseases in the library; it had a great impact on him and, in the context of Brazilian political resistance to the military dictatorship, he decided to engage himself in a project of social denunciation by reproducing common diseases among the poorer social classes in Brazil. Bonfanti started to visit the Instituto de Doenças Tropicais of Rio de Janeiro with the aim of producing etchings that would graphically reproduce some of these diseases.
Next, the artist headed to the Sector of Anatomy of the Instituto Hahnemanniano to photograph corpses, from which he intended to produce photo-etchings in addition to making use of graphic resources. During this almost two-year period, Gianguido separated from his first wife, going through an emotional crisis that left him with little inspiration for painting. His project, alas, went unfinished.
In 1978, he turned to collective work: he designed a theatre in a small room in the Centro Cultural Cândido Mendes, where the play As Gralhas (based on a text by Kafka) was staged, the scenery of which he was also responsible for [1]. In this period, as a result of his personal crisis, the artist began psychoanalysis with Mário Romaguera, which was to continue for four years, until mid-1982.
Also in 1978, he began to give etching and photo-etching classes at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage (EAV). During this period, with Rubens Gerchman as the director (1975-1980), Parque Lage played a leading role in producing artists and staging cultural events, becoming the most important art school in Latin America in the seventies. It was attended by a significant number of artists and intellectuals, and was one more centre of resistance to the military regime.
The scenographic settings of Gianguido Bonfanti selected a minimum number of objects which, while being functionally necessary for the development of the action, were also, in view of the extreme quantitative limits, endowed with a highly concentrated potential of insinuations concerning the symbolic role which each of these objects plays in the clash of forces involved. In this context, special mention should be made of the inventiveness of his solutions, such as the fanciful chair which one of the characters carries on his back, or the door which, when shifted from its vertical position to the horizontal, is transformed into a bed. But even very simple objects, such as a clock or a cap pulled down over the head, acquire, with the help of suitable manipulation by the interpreters, a much wider significance than its merely utilitarian function would allow one to suppose.
(Yan Michalski. In Jornal do Brasil, Caderno B. Rio de Janeiro, 30.12.1978).
The year 1979 was a milestone in Bonfanti’s life. Full of vigour, he returned to his etching and drawing work, the subject material of which is coloured by the personal experience of psychoanalysis. The flowering of family phantasmagoria was unrestrained and resulted in a series of eight etchings and a large number of ink sketches.
One starts to feel here the passage from drawing to painting: the totally white background in the previous drawings is now occupied.
He took part in the 2ª Mostra Anual de Gravura da Cidade de Curitiba, winning the Acquisition Award.
This year also marked the initial “flirtation” of Bonfanti with colour, hitherto excluded from his work. He began doing works in dry-pastel as a further step towards painting. The abstraction that we find later on is already felt in certain parts of the composition. The dry-pastel stick is an instrument halfway between drawing and painting; its contact with the hand is equivalent to that of charcoal or pencil and the result can be that of a full painting, as in Degas.
Bonfant’s enthusiasm to study and invest in the field of painting is stirred and will last for a whole decade. He carried out research in a restoration studio with Marilka Mendes and Edson Motta Filho. He also devoted much time to the study of specialist books, seeking the best solutions for the technical problems of painting and the best forms of conservation. The artist’s concern about the permanence and durability of a work is a constant one.
He taught etching from 1980 to 1982 at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica of Rio de Janeiro (PUC). In 1980, one of his students was Marisa Schargel Maia, his future wife.
These two years were marked by great personal changes: he married Marisa on 9 May 1981, despite the resistance of both families to the sudden decision. He set up a new home, continuing, however, to reside in Santa Teresa, the traditional bohemian district of the city, popular among intellectuals and artists.
Still dialoguing with architecture, he elaborated the project and accompanied the construction of the studio for etching in metal at the Fundação José Augusto in Natal (RN), giving the inaugural course in the institution. In the same period, the Biblioteca Câmara Cascudo, in the same city, organized his one-man show: “Gianguido Bonfanti – Desenhos e Gravuras”.
Now, thoroughly taken by colour, Bonfanti won the award in the Drawing category of the 5º Salão Carioca de Arte of Rio de Janeiro with his dry pastels.
Now began a long period of reclusion in the studio which would extend until 1985, in which Bonfanti devoted himself to oil painting, establishing a dialogue with the history of painting that runs through portraiture, a recurrent theme in every epoch, the fundamental reference for Francis Bacon, Edward Munch and, later on, the transvanguarda of Sandro Chia and Mimmo Paladino.
His first daughter, Pérola, was born on 30 December 1983.
Affected by the experience of his wife’s pregnancy, his painting changed direction and he drew closer to Miró.
During this period, he interrupted his teaching activities at the Escola de Artes Visuais and taught live model drawing and painting at the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM), Rio de Janeiro.
After his period of reclusion, the art dealer Franco Terranova organized a major exhibition of his oil and gouache paintings in 1985, at the Espaço Petite Galerie: “Gianguido Bonfanti – Pinturas e Guaches 1983-1985”.
On this occasion, the biggest contemporary art collector in Brazil, Gilberto Chateaubriand, purchased three large canvasses, the start of a collection that today numbers more than 40 of Bonfanti’s works.
On 18 December 1985, his father, Gianfranco Bonfanti, died on turning 61 years of age.
It is also certain that a number of these signs-symbols still retain the memory of the previous violence (visible in his black and white drawings of ten years ago, with sharp cutting objects) and it is for this reason that his painting is neither mild nor decorative. The artist continues to create “disturbing images” but, undoubtedly, the best thing about his current work is this new lyricism which exults life and love.
(Frederico Morais. “Bonfanti na Petite Galerie: Cores líricas sobre ‘imagens incômodas’”. O Globo. Rio de Janeiro, 14.06.1985).
After the death of his father, in addition to his teaching and painting activities, Bonfanti devoted himself to reorganizing the family, both emotionally and financially: his mother Bianca and his sister Anna Claudia needed support.
Under the new director of the Escola de Artes Visuais, Frederico Morais, Bonfanti became engaged in the project for reformulating its pedagogic structure, taking over the live model course. From this moment on, he will not interrupt his teaching activities at EAV. During these two years, he also taught drawing and painting at Faculdade da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro.
Parallel to his teaching work, the move towards pure abstraction in his painting continued. Bonfanti turned to its founder, Kandinsky; and studied the work of the master in the theoretical and pictorial fields, which would allow him to grasp the language of the forms and colours beyond the subject. In this process, he sought to develop his ability to read a work of art through its pulsations. This formal research reached a synthesis in 1987, now under the influence of Frank Stella.
After visiting his studio for five years, the art dealer Thomas Cohn (1988) organized a one-man show of his geometric paintings in his gallery, Thomas Cohn Arte Contemporânea: “Bonfanti”.
It was Thomas Cohn who said: “When it was thought that nothing more could be done in geometry, along came his canvasses!” The specialist critics characterised this new phase as a radical moment of change that contained, however, elements of his previous work. What not even the artist was aware of was that another change was on its way: on returning to studio work after the exhibition, formal painting with flat and opaque colours started to make him feel imprisoned. Bonfanti leaves geometry and goes in search of glazing, overlays and organicity.
In 1989, he visited New York, absorbing the full impact of this effervescent metropolis with its 400 art galleries and museums.
He also devoted himself to the study and debate of the aesthetics and problematique of art in the contemporary world: he organized and coordinated the Forum of Ideas in the Escola de Artes Visuais.
The research of the previous period lead to the exhibition organized by Paulo Figueiredo, at the Paulo Figueiredo Galeria de Arte, in São Paulo: “Bonfanti”. By this time, Daniel Piza was accompanying his artistic production, writing a review for the newspaper Estado de S. Paulo: “Pintura evolui da geometria ao erotismo.”
There began a long new period of reclusion in the studio. Figuration slowly returned, accompanied by glazings of complementary colours, filters of cobalt violets overlaying cadmium orange backgrounds.
The violence of the gesture spread impastos onto the canvas. It was his red phase, which extended until the beginning of 1999.
Alongside his studio work, Bonfanti continued with his studies of the history of art and aesthetics. In a certain way, the abstract experience had enriched him and, at the same time, given him the confidence to return to figurative painting, allowing him to distance himself even more from the subject matter of the work and look at painting itself. Furthermore, the confused state of contemporary art forced him to reflect: on 26 May 1996 he published an article in the Idéias/Livros section of Jornal do Brasil entitled “The painting war”, denouncing the true reasons behind the hackneyed claim that painting no longer had the power to dialogue with the contemporary world.
That same year, the Museu de Arte Moderna of Rio de Janeiro staged a major individual exhibition: “Bonfanti” [333, 334, 335]. The show featured 15 large-format oils from the red series and a collection of drawings and etchings from the 1970s as a matrix of the new paintings. The critics received the exhibition enthusiastically, and a considerable number of articles were published. Of particular importance were the reviews by Wilson Coutinho, who had accompanied his work since 1981. The critic wrote various articles, among them a piece in O Globo, on 4 May 1996 entitled: “Dos desenhos às pinturas de alta qualidade.”
Also that year, Bonfanti had another important encounter: on a trip to NewYork, browsing through the library of the museum of Modern Art, he came across a book by the English artist Frank Auerbach.
Doubts were overcome, opening the way for painting of a high quality, but another moral contingency must have helped him. The so-called English school of painting made up of Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud and Frank Auerbach was starting to be taken seriously by the critics. Bacon, for sure, already was, but Freud and his realist and psychologically dense painting, and Auerbach, with the vigour of his material, began to bid farewell to their years of isolation. Time had corrected their deficiencies. The suave and Californian spirit of David Hockney seemed – if it is not – an archaism. In the United States, nobody was painting or, at least as far as one could notice, imagining that Julian Schabel had been devoted to painting or Jean Michael Basquiat idem.
(...) what forms part of Gianguido’s expressive works is something openly sad. If he has no conviction for psychological realism, his scenes seem to be affixed in dehumanized flesh, it is because he is a painter of the anti-natural by instinct, which is not the case either with Freud or Auerbach. One fact about his work, when it is successful, is that it is a complete involvement of every point in the painting, not allowing certain distances where one will introduce a psychological hue. They are scenes, at times, even very agitated, but they seem to require of their actors a certain plastic paralysis in which any psychological intervention would attenuate what he wants to convey as a painter, i.e., a relevant surface, full of significant visual events on all sides. Perhaps his scenes are forceful because of this and find equivalence in his etchings.
Gianguido is still not a painter that despises tradition, and I am not speaking of just the modernist tradition. There are shades of Delacroix, certain Rubenesque effects; painters that knew how to dramatize their paintings. There are even elegant touches and a palette that shows a selective harmony in the colours, with red predominating, used, I believe, as the more poetic vehicle of his intentions. It is certain, at least in my view, that Gianguido’s exhibition at MAM-Rio was a process of changing the scene by gliding and diving into an atmosphere of colours and gestures. The first paintings still highlighted huge phalluses, which remind one of the debauched sexuality of certain members of the so-called transvanguarda. But, immediately the painter recovers his fundamental experimentation and follows the paths dictated by his instincts.
(Wilson Coutinho. In the magazine Rio Artes 23, 1996).
This then is an artist who is out of fashion. This is a painter who is not ashamed to be fully a painter, who does not try and disguise that which is particular to the language of painting with modernising touches and tricks, just to be up-to-date with international fads, which the critics are so fond of. Virile, strong, exuberant painting shows the painter to be in the fullness of his craft and technical resources. Painting that thematises the artist’s obsessions – the binomials pleasure and solitude, confinement and memory, animistic archetypes and projections – which, however, are transferred from the biographic and confessional terrains to the territory of personal painting and, as such, universal in their intent. Also, painting of an absolutely particular world leading to the broader discussion of sexuality and power, etc. Thematic painting, I insist, but never for a moment any the lesser for it. On the contrary, it is this thematic which leads to the creative vigour, which provides the libidinous energy which leads to the maelstrom of the form, the erotic quality of the gestures, the almost orgastic expansion of the colour.
Out of fashion, but within the finest tradition of universal painting. Standing before these new canvasses of Gianguido Bonfanti, names and works that make up the heritage of universal art spring to mind: El Greco, Rembrandt (the flayed ox), Orozco (the Promethean figure of the artist consumed in his own creative fire), Kokoska (his emaciated figures), Egon Shiele (self-portrait masturbating), Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Lucien Freud and Iberê Camargo. In all these artists, and also in Gianguido Bonfanti, the central, almost only, theme has always been man – his doubts, anxieties, desires and perversions. Man that denudes himself to reveal and, once again, try to decipher the enigma of existence. The work of all these artists is based on their experience of life and, for this reason, the creative impulse that leads them to paint so intensely was certainly not the desire to create new trends or fads. As Iberê Camargo once said: “Great artists do not want to innovate. They want to give an answer to life.”
(Frederico Morais. In the exhibition catalogue Bonfanti. Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, 1996).
1997-1999 - Ochre, terracotta, greys...
This is a period of great upheaval in his life: his mother, Bianca, slowly wastes away from Parkinson’s disease; for reasons of work, his sister, Renata, moves with her husband and two children to Argentina; his wife’s mother is struck down by a serious illness and dies in a few months in January 1998.
These facts were something of a turning point for Gianguido, leading him to draw close to his wife’s family.
Once again, disillusioned with the world and in the midst of a personal crisis, he returns to psychoanalysis, this time with Sherrine Borges.
Together with Mauro Nogueira, he elaborated the architectural project for the Anita Schwartz Gallery, in Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, with the opening featuring his one-man show: “Bonfanti”. Meanwhile, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro staged another exhibition with canvasses and ink sketches. As a result of his reflections on the theory and practice of painting, Bonfanti wrote the text of the catalogue of these two exhibitions: “It is on the plane of sensations that creation reaches its full potency and thus allowing the transcendent work of art”.
THE SUBLIME FREEDOM TO BE DAMNED.
Art as an ethic of solitary expression
Far from the arrivalism of the art bandwagon, Bonfanti produces difficult painting, atemporal painting, with the dignity of running the risk of remaining misunderstood in his own time. It is a risk for someone who does not see art as a salon label, but an ethic of solitary expression. The sexual violence of his paintings, besides his skilled technique, will one day be considered contemporaneous; even because the disillusionment of desire has the fatal knack of always being current. A damned artist, Bonfanti can play around with the advantage of using his freedom to express his world at will, only competing with the curse of his own images.
(Wilson Coutinho. In O Globo, Segundo Caderno. Rio de Janeiro, 15.11.2000).
Encouraged by the critic Wilson Coutinho to take part in a collective exhibition that brought together 100 self-portraits by Brazilian artists, Bonfanti began a new phase, producing a series of self-portraits in which initially the influence of Frank Auerbach is visible.
The Museu Nacional de Belas Artes of Rio de Janeiro staged an individual show which, besides the large-format canvasses, included the series of self-portraits, etchings in metal and pen sketches.
2003-2005 - Year of Brazil in France
2003 began with two important reviews on the previous year’s exhibition: Wilson Coutinho wrote a piece for the newspaper O Globo, on 10 January 2003: “Na contracorrente da arte atual,” while Daniel Piza published “A exceção neofigurativa” in the São Paulo magazine Bravo.
In September of that year, Bonfanti heard about the Year of Brazil in France, through a student, Christéle Guerard. Bonfanti’s interest in the event prompted Christéle to show his book to Jean-Paul Lefevre, the cultural attaché of France in Rio de Janeiro. This began a process which will result in an individual exhibition at the Galerie Le Troisième Œil, in Paris, in September 2005 and in the publication of this book.
In 2004, The Museu de Arte Metropolitano de Curitiba (PR) staged an individual show with 30 works: “Gianguido Bonfanti”.
He illustrated the book Caligrafias, by Adriana Lisboa (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Rocco) and the cover of Extremos da alma, by Marisa Schargel Maia (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Garamond).
In 2005, Bonfanti has continued his teaching activties at EAV and devoted himself to the publication of this book and the exhibition in Paris.
Bonfanti is a great artist and his ethics, quite out of the ordinary: he will not give up what he believes in to please anyone, least of all the brigade of light cavalry, formed by certain curators. He knows that in the famous poem of the Victorian Poet Laureate Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) the British brigade wins the battle. In reality, it lost it.
(Wilson Coutinho. In O Globo, Segundo Caderno. Rio de Janeiro, 10.01.2003).
Bonfanti has influences from Iberê Camargo and the English painting of recent decades, such as that of Frank Auerbach. But he has constructed a language which is entirely his own, very strong, particularly in the canvasses bathed in ochre in which burning violet appears here and there. It represents the best in figurative painting in Brazil today.
(Daniel Piza. In O Estado de S. Paulo, Caderno 2/Cultura. São Paulo, 13.07.2003).
Intense period of special importance for his career. Bonfanti continues his teaching activities at EAV – Parque Lage, but devotes much of his time to the new book Bonfanti, published in Switzerland and printed in France by Acatos Publishing, and distributed by Flammarion. A tri-lingual publication (390 pages), with around three hundred reproductions, it includes two articles: “A Vocação Profética da Pintura” (The Prophetic Vocation of Painting), written by the French critic Michael Francis Gibson and “A Densidade da Beleza”, written by the Brazilian art critic Daniel Piza. This book is something of a milestone, as in conjunction with the individual exhibition “Bonfanti, Peintures et Dessins”, at Galerie le Troisième Oeil, in Paris, in September 2005, it marks the beginning of the association with the French marchande Annie-Marie Marquette, disseminating his work in Europe. At the time of the exhibition, a number of critical reviews were written. In “Bonfanti l’Humanite à Vif” (La Gazette de l’Hôtel Drouot, n. 33-30. Paris, September 2005), Lydia Harambourg writes: “The painting of Bonfanti confronts us with ourselves. It is also necessary not to forget that he distills incarnate wisdom, a quality inherent to every great painter.”
The book Bonfanti is launched in Rio de Janeiro in November of that same year and Gilberto Chateaubriand had this to say about it: “this book is the crowning of Napoleon – with the presence of the Pope.” Bonfanti includes significant contributions from the communication media: Daniel Piza (O Estado de S. Paulo), Rosa Maria Corrêa (Revista Atelier, Rio de Janeiro), Eduardo Fradkin (O Globo, Rio de Janeiro) and Cleusa Maria (Jornal do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro).
In 2006, his mother, Bianca Bonfanti, after a decade of suffering, dies in June. While Bonfanti is still in mourning, the exhibition “Bonfanti, Peintures et Dessins” opens at Galerie Le Troisième Œil, Bordeaux (France), where he is also given an enthusiastic welcome. In a review of the book, Ali Gauthey in PhArts, (October/November/2006), an art magazine published in Switzerland, writes: “An unequalled draftsman, surprising etcher (aqua fortis), painter of stature... and one of the leading figures in contemporary painting, and this admirably produced book, in every detail, is a testimony to this.”
More tranquil years of continuing to develop a language, working in his studio. In pursuing the dialogue between painting, drawing and etching, he continues with the scenes of purgatory, expanding the scale of the self-portraits, some produced in large formats. Also in 2007 he is invited by the writer Lêdo Ivo to do his portrait for the book Réquiem, published by Contra Capa in 2008.