Eleonore Koch German-Brazilian, 1926-2018

Though her figurative practice was a sharp rejection of the geometric abstraction that had come to dominate Brazilian art, Eleonore Koch’s work retains a Brazilianness through her choice of tempera as her medium, the purity and intensity of colour, her paintings’ heavy atmosphere and her short brushstrokes, like brickwork, positioning her in concord artists such as Alfredo Volpi and Ione Saldanha. Koch was Volpi’s only student in the discipline of tempera, using his recipe and pigments to produce a body of work that shares his palette as well as his search for the ‘resolution of the painting,’ her landscapes serving as a field in which to perfect the relationships between line, colour and space.

Eleonore Koch typically worked from studies on paper, later translated to canvas; she annotated the margins with the pigments used to mix each paint. Her works on paper, which she described as 'rehearsals,' reflect the meticulous efforts behind each composition, as she sought to perfect the communication between colours above all else. Her unusual perspective has been likened to 14th century Italian painting, from where her teacher Volpi developed his appreciation for egg tempera. Through the unique qualities of tempera, Koch revives their stillness and bright clarity.