Antonio Kuschnir (Rio de Janeiro, 2001), one of the most well-known young Brazilian painters on the current scene, is exhibiting in Milan with the solo show Arcádia Incerta at the ABC-Arte gallery. Represented by the Italian gallery and by WG in São Paulo – where he will also have another solo show in April, in addition to a collaboration with the Mallorcan gallery Baró – Antonio has already confirmed his participation in the main Brazilian art fairs this year: we will see his work at SP-Arte, at FARGO – the Goiânia fair, where his production will be presented by Ricardo Braudes – and at ArtRio, at the end of September. Moving between Germany – the artist has been living near Cologne for two years – and Rio de Janeiro, where he has a studio in the Humaitá neighborhood, I meet Antonio “the colorist”, as he defines himself, in the days leading up to his Italian opening…
Antonio, I invited you to take part in this column because I think your work has a lot to do with the question of landscape, in the broadest sense of the term. In fact, seeing some of the images of the works that make up “Arcádia Incerta”, your first show in Milan after the solo exhibition you had at ABC Arte in Genoa in 2025, I am even more convinced of this. But tell me: how did you start?
It’s a cliché, but I have always loved drawing, painting. It has always been something present in my life, since I was very little. My mother has always been very supportive. I took my first art course as a child, at Parque Lage, in Rio. It was a fantastic experience, with excellent teachers. From the age of 14, 15, I focused a lot on drawing. I had a Facebook page where I posted them, until I started getting feedback: the drawings were shared and I began to sell them. With that first money I started buying my own canvases. Of course, I had my mother’s help, but that world was something I already saw as a job, I wanted to live from it. So when the time came to choose university, I was already sure I wanted to do art. I enrolled at the School of Fine Arts at UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, ed.), which has a proper painting course, because the practical dimension interests me a lot. In the meantime, I also started exhibiting a bit, taking my first steps. And since then, I have worked and lived from this.
What years are we talking about?
I enrolled at the School of Fine Arts in 2019. I had a normal first year, but then the pandemic arrived and everything became a bit confusing. I completed the course in 2024, but I was already doing other things at the same time. The university was great for learning a lot, but I didn’t wait until I finished to get busy: I managed to have my own studio and that helped with the production of more elaborate works. In short, here we are, now.
Tell me something: did social media really offer you concrete opportunities to develop and sustain your work?
Exactly. Several opportunities I had came through Facebook, which was more used at the time, and today through Instagram. However, I don’t prioritize these tools, I don’t make reels, videos or flashy stories; my profiles are very simple, but suddenly something comes up. We shouldn’t subordinate our work to social media, but they are a vehicle. Although they have a series of deleterious, exhausting, even problematic dynamics, they can still help.
I find this point of view interesting, also because you are the first artist who clearly talks to me about this possibility of showing work on social media, whose relevance would be naïve to ignore...
For me it is an opening, because it is also a way for many people to see the work and for it to have a greater reach. Sometimes someone doesn’t come to your show, but they get to know your work because they see it on Instagram. And that has value, right? Of course, the priority remains the exhibition, the experience of seeing the works in person, because it is impossible to understand a painting just from a photo, but it is also nice to have an online response, some way of transmitting an idea.
Did you start painting your world from the beginning?
Yes, although at the beginning, back in the Parque Lage days, my passion was abstract, super colorful painting. Rothko was my great inspiration at the time. The figurative came later, but color has always been present in my life; even today it is something that attracts me a lot, you know? What interests me in painting is also its formal aspect. Then I started drawing thinking a lot about the body, the people around me, including self-portrait. The desire for figuration was something very instinctive, almost: I wanted to represent physical things I could see, touch. Even if imagined, they were always images of figures, of objects. The decorative also stimulates me a lot: textures, contrasts, relationships between colors. There is a thin line between the priority of figuration and content, but I have always liked the idea of being able to speak about the “real world” through painting. To make, in a sense, a comment on what exists and what could exist.
When I first saw your work I think I thought of Marc Chagall, you know? Flying horses, couples holding hands. Subjects you may never have painted, but that remained in my mental images. There is also a dreamlike aspect, right?
Not that my canvases are about dreams, but that they inhabit a dreamlike universe, as you said, yes. I love the idea that the impossible becomes possible, the unlikely becomes obvious, do you see? I love these contradictions that the dreamlike aspect allows us to explore.
I remember the large work you exhibited with WG São Paulo at ArtRio last year, which was a large crocodile with those gigantic teeth, while next to it there was a woman lying down, almost a mermaid. Does mythology also come in?
One of the interesting things about that painting, for me, is precisely the contrast between an extremely threatening element and the calmness of the girl floating in the water. I like to imagine that the danger is about to unfold, but in the end it does not. It refers to an inversion of obvious meanings. Playing with these perceptions interests me: at the same time as the image initially presents itself as an imagined life of reality, it also betrays our expectations. It is about questioning our universe.
Speaking of the everyday universe, what is your routine as a painter like, since you live between two sides of the Atlantic, moving between Cologne and Rio de Janeiro?
I am very methodical, even though I am not in life in general. I strongly believe in the saying in art that you cannot wait for the muse of inspiration: she must find you already at your desk; she must know you will be there when she arrives. It’s true. It is not about painting for the sake of painting, nor about quantity: it is about practice. It seems obvious, but I feel that producing every day gives me the chance to loosen my hand, warming up the process and anticipating different demands. I don’t have to switch into “ok, now I must sit down and produce something”; I am already used to it and everything flows. However, it doesn’t mean my production is fast.
That was my next question...
There are some paintings that I jokingly call Van Gogh-like: an explosion of colors. Others take time. There are some I return to years later and change many things. Recently, in Rio, I was in this process of revision: there were several works there that needed time. I will show some of them at SP-Arte and at the solo show at WG. In short, I have several works that took years to produce, from 2020 to 2025: I go back to them, retouch them. So, even being in the studio all day, I don’t necessarily finish one canvas a day, although it can happen. The only interruption to the routine is when I change country or travel, so there is a forced pause. In that sense it is always a restart, re-adapting to the environment, the space, the schedules. There I do need to unlock myself, I literally need to warm up my hand so it understands what I am doing. For me painting is hand, eye, brain and connection: these four things must be synchronized. Sometimes, on days when I am more tired or frustrated, I realize everything works except one element; sometimes the emotion is there, but the hand is not in tune with what you want. It is always a matter of overall harmony.
Since we are talking about the act of painting and this column focuses on the relationship between art and “landscape”: do you perceive a change of subject, themes, light from Brazil to Germany, and from Germany to Brazil?
Totally. And there is more: there are moments when I am in Germany, but I am doing something for Brazil. So some visions produced in the northern hemisphere still have a Brazilian feel. Since I arrived in Germany I discovered what cold is: in Brazil there is nothing like it. Now, for the first time, snow is appearing in my paintings, icy landscapes. What was once imagination has now become subject. In fact, in the show at ABC there are three or four with snow, the figures are more dressed, they wear oversized clothes, well covered. These are subtle things, but they emerge. The references also change: both in Germany and in Italy, Switzerland, France, you come into contact with European art history with knights, saints, popes, ladies, all those Renaissance and Medieval archetypes. That’s why I think there is something European that has definitively entered my production, while in Brazil I used for a long time much more tropical scenarios, the abundance of nature, which still attracts me. In short, I feel this exchange well: these two realities contributing to my work.
Speaking of references, had you already visited Milan? Does ancient art inspire you?
I have been to Milan twice before and although they were short visits, I managed to see a few museums. As for my research, there are several paintings with references to Italian art: in “Arcádia Incerta” there are works that include fragments of pieces found in the Pinacoteca di Brera. There is a Tintoretto there that I adore. Italian art is something I am now getting deeply in touch with. The panels by Veronese, for example, are incredible – I am fascinated by the colors. But perhaps my favorite Italian painter is Paolo Uccello: I am completely in love with his battles. Then there is French Modernism. Matisse, for example, is a huge reference for me, especially in terms of color, the beauty of decoration, that idea of creating images that carry a certain notion of “Luxury, calm and voluptuousness”, which is also the title of one of his paintings. Matisse manages to bring a contradiction that interests me: the images are pleasant, idyllic, but the brushwork itself is often rough, almost aggressive. In Brazil, Portinari’s large murals have always struck me: this theme of compositions with many figures, this idea of historical painting – but without a defined story. I jokingly say I paint “imagined historical environments”. I am interested in this notion of scene, of characters that sometimes repeat themselves. And before Portinari, there is 19th-century Brazilian academic painting: Almeida Júnior, for example.
Now that you mentioned Almeida Júnior it is as if the title “Arcádia Incerta” makes more sense...
“Arcádia Incerta” is a title born in conversation with Milovan Farronato. We were discussing the exhibition, trying to find something that would unify the works, and the words that kept coming up identified this idea of Arcadia, of the idyllic, of the pastoral: themes that have always interested me. I think a lot about works by artists like Giorgione, with those figures on the grass, this tradition of landscape with resting figures. I have always liked it very much. In these more recent works, and in this exhibition, it has become very evident: almost all the paintings carry this sense of pleasure, of calm, this Arcadian atmosphere. However, this calm is always interrupted, pierced, by something that is about to happen, insinuated, like a possibility of subversion. There is an unease in the air. There are figures resting on the grass, but next to them appears a half-demonic creature, or something strange. There are exchanges between characters that can be pleasant, but also bring something horrible, ambiguous, as we said before. “Arcádia Incerta” is this: a paradise that is never fully safe, a tranquility that carries with it a sense of estrangement. It breaks certainties.
I would say that, even though it is an “imaginary” construction, it also manages to speak about the world, about the dark things that permeate our daily life...
Yes, about the duality of everyday life. It is impossible to live in permanent harmony and, if it were possible, it would be an illusion. I feel this tension is present in all the works. In fact, the work that appears on the exhibition poster is a very idyllic scene, but if you look closely you can even see a rooster and a snake about to fight. These are small elements that insert themselves and disturb the calm surface. There is another canvas with a man on horseback who looks back and sees the head of a giant emerging from behind the mountains. In short, a series of images that bring this idea of duality, of uncertainty. All this accumulated tension explodes in the largest painting in the exhibition: a battle scene more than three meters wide with dozens of characters. It is an almost megalomaniac production and, frankly, my favorite. There violence appears explicitly: people falling, blood, weapons. It is a mix of medieval and contemporary, because there are guns and swords. It may be something unexpected for those who follow my work, since there has never been – until now – so much explicit violence.
Is the exhibition designed as a journey that leads there, to that explosion?
Not necessarily. It is something I perceive when I bring all these works together. It is as if this tension is armed gradually and gains strength to explode at the right moment.
Everything in “Arcádia Incerta” was produced in Germany?
More or less. Part was produced in Brazil, another part in Germany. I made some final touches here in Italy: basic things, but things I always like to do. In other cases, as happened in Genoa in the previous show at ABC, I made more substantial changes to works already in the gallery, just before the opening. This happens because I like to think of the exhibition as a whole, a unity, not just a collection of works linked only by a certain period.
I think that is not so common, you know? Usually artists arrive at the exhibition in a hurry: installation almost always ends at the last minute, without time to review and fix absolutely anything...
Yes, but I like to be involved in all stages. As I said before, this working method is part of me. I like doing things my own way. During installation I like to have a say in where each painting goes: the height, the frame, whether this or that fits. I like to have a week to rest my eye, to see if the exhibition works, what dialogues with what, what makes sense, what doesn’t, what I remove, what I add. For me, the exhibition is an important moment because the work needs to be seen by everyone. I think of it like a theater play: you rehearse, study the lines, you have a beautiful costume, you learn everything by heart. It is a long process. But it really happens when the doors of the theater open, the curtain rises, and the audience can interact with the work. Of course, the work is not born there, but that is where a new phase of its life begins. That is why I give so much attention to this moment. I like to take care of it. These theatrical analogies, by the way, are present throughout my work. I did amateur theater for ten years: classes, courses, performances. Today I like to bring these memories into my work, so much so that most of the terms I use to describe it are these: scenarios, characters, costumes, protagonists, supporting roles, recurring characters, returning elements. In this exhibition, in fact, there is a painting with a red curtain that occupies almost the entire canvas, and one of the characters is opening it.
This is another question in art that I find very interesting and that for some might seem outdated: mimesis. Theater is imitation, art is representation: you choose to believe it, being moved, impressed, even terrified...
Exactly. It is seeing a painted Christ and suffering with him, for him, or because of him. I think art has this goal, this function of making the viewer believe that something is, in a sense, real, even while knowing it is not. One of the most exciting things about art, for me, is exploring this aspect.
It is almost as if you create a diorama, even if it is not a three-dimensional scientific object – as a diorama would require. But in any case, you create an environment.
I had never thought of it, but I think it makes sense. In fact, I treat my subjects as living organisms. Some are based on real people: I myself appear in several works, also my partner, my sister, my mother, friends; they coexist with imagined figures or figures from other paintings I have observed over time.
So abstraction has been completely abandoned?
At first glance maybe yes, but in reality no. That painting you mentioned, of the crocodile shown at ArtRio, is an example I like to give when talking about this interest in abstraction within figuration. For example, its skin is completely abstract. Several works in “Arcádia Incerta” have highly elaborate clothing, drapery in which I insert various abstract elements that can be read as simple textile patterns, but for me they also function as devices of abstraction within a figurative painting. It is a process that fascinates me: the abstract does not appear at first but remains within the composition. In fact, I begin by sketching the canvas with lines, squares, geometric pieces to indicate to myself what will enter the scene.
Do you use photographs or illustrations as reference?
Sometimes yes, but to make very specific things; I rarely take a photo and paint it. Sometimes I look for a better match with an element, so I use the photo, but it is not my usual practice. Even the sketches themselves remain incomprehensible to an outsider: they are always super stylized, very simple, they only serve to help me understand the composition, the movements, the lines of force, the tensions I will introduce. However, in the end, it is always painting that commands; it dominates and you must be open to its rules.
So you are saying it is color that dominates?
Exactly. In fact, when I talk about painting I am referring precisely to color. Color is the key to solving it: sometimes it is a blue that must become red, a pink that must become green. Other times it is a composition that takes a long time to work: and then you remove a figure or change the orientation of an arm, you turn things upside down. I say painting always requires, always implies changes. And even if I knew exactly what I want, I think there would always be something unexpected happening. Even an “error”, so to speak, opens new spaces for painting.
Do you work on several works at the same time?
It depends a lot on the painting and the moment. For example, when I am in the process of preparing a show, I like to do things in a more shared way. But in many cases, there are works that present themselves as a problem to be solved. When a challenge appears, I stay focused on it until I solve it, so I can move on to the next one. In short, I don’t have a rule for this. For example, the last painting I did in Rio, before coming to Milan, does not belong to any series: it is a self-portrait, a classic scene but with an almost comic tone, somewhat caricatural. I appear painting with both hands at the same time, on two different canvases, and also with both feet and with a brush held in my mouth. In total, I am painting five canvases simultaneously. The idea came from looking at a drawing by Hokusai: another development…
It is curious, I also learn from artists: I discover each one’s methods and the struggles they undertake with their production. In general I would say there are more moments of struggle than of tranquility...
I can say that sometimes the best medicine for a painting is to turn it around and forget it for a while. At least according to my way of working. It also happens that you finish a work that at the moment seems perfect, but immediately afterwards you see it as uncertain: it is necessary to take distance, even psychologically.
