Pinturas cegas

Between 1959 and 1962, artist Tomie Ohtake (b. Kyoto, 1913, naturalized Brazilian) took her art to extremes, through a sense of being hostage to her own perception she started creating with her eyes blindfolded. Instructed by critic Mrio Pedrosa (1900 - 1981), she learned the theory of Phenomenology of Perception of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 - 1961), according to which perception is an event based on the experience of the senses. The outcome was the series of paintings known as the "Pinturas Cegas". The challenging task was to gather the 33 abstract works from collections and private collections throughout Brazil and abroad results in the opportunity to contemplate, for the first time, a significant number in this series unknown to the general public. Curator Paul Herkenhoff highlights the fact that the paintings have remained unknown by the general public and ignored by much of the historiography until 2011, when an exhibition dedicated to only these works revealed the and the aesthetic strength of her experiment.