A gallery built
for slow looking.
Galeria Harmonia occupies a restored 1920s townhouse on Rua Harmonia, in the heart of Vila Madalena, São Paulo. Three sequential rooms and an inner courtyard, lit by a south-facing skylight. We mount one and a half exhibitions a year, never more, and publish a catalogue for each.
Founded as a research project.
Galeria Harmonia began in 1998 as a private archive of correspondence between modern Latin American women artists, their dealers and their critics, in the years 1920 to 1955. The archive was assembled by Helena Carvalho, then a curator at the Pinacoteca do Estado, over several years.
That same year the gallery opened its doors with Tarsila: Antropofagia e Paisagem, twenty-six works drawn from twelve private collections, many never before seen in São Paulo. The exhibition ran four months and was reviewed across the country's art press.
Over the decades since, the programme has narrowed to a close circle of Latin American women modernists active between 1920 and 1950. The archive remains the gallery's working method: each exhibition begins with years of correspondence research and concludes with a printed catalogue that publishes new material.
Curatorial team.
-
Helena Carvalho
Director, Founding CuratorBefore Galeria Harmonia, Helena Carvalho was a curator at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and at MASP. She holds a PhD in art history from the University of São Paulo (USP) and has worked for over two decades on the women of Latin American modernism.
-
Beatriz Salles
Associate CuratorBeatriz Salles joined the gallery in 2011 after five years at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake. She curated "Pau-Brasil: A Cor que o Brasil Inventou" and is preparing a monograph on Anita Malfatti.
-
Mariana Okada
Registrar & ArchiveMariana Okada manages the gallery's loan registry and working archive. She trained at ECA-USP and previously worked in the collections department of MAM-SP.
One and a half exhibitions a year.
Most contemporary galleries mount between six and ten exhibitions a year, a rhythm imposed by the art-fair calendar and the velocity of the secondary market. Galeria Harmonia has stepped out of that rhythm by choice. We open three exhibitions every two years, each on view for three to four months and supported by years of archival research.
This pace has consequences. It limits our audience to those willing to come twice in a season rather than once a month. It limits our financial scale. But it lets us publish catalogues of record, several of them acquired by the libraries of MASP and the Pinacoteca do Estado.
- A printed catalogue with new scholarly material
- A free public lecture by the curator on opening night
- A private viewing day for press, curators and academic researchers
- Open consultation of the working archive, by appointment
The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 7pm. Admission is free. Catalogues are available on site, by mail order, and at Livraria da Vila. Sunday viewings are arranged by appointment.
Plan a visit