Joao Carlos Galvao began his first studies in painting in 1951. He studied at the National School of Fine Arts at the University of Brazil between 1964 and 1966, before settling a few years in Paris to study sociology of art under the direction of Jean Cassou. Between 1966 and 1970, he attended the workshops of Sergio Camargo, Antonio Asis, Victor Vasarely and Yvaral. His first solo exhibition was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1972. He later exhibited several times with kinetic artists in Paris as well as with the group MADI.

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Galvao sculpts the wood, preferably the one that comes from his country of origin. He makes reliefs and sometimes foot sculptures assimilated to totems. The eye of the spectator must apprehend these reliefs from all their angles, angles which become entangled and superimposed in a surprising sinuous movement. Between the modules sometimes round, sometimes cubic, is hollow cavities, cuts, three-dimensional grooves. The very dense forms seem to multiply before our eyes and arise from the back of the work.

 

The artist models his elements in concave or convex form, but also in the form of disks. The wood and acrylic paint give a perfectly smooth rendering that invites to touch. The juxtaposition of these small pieces is done in an order more and more chaotic as the years pass and his work develops. After the first assemblings of wood, repetitively rigorously constructed structures, follow more intuitive reliefs, impressed with a certain emotion that corrects the strict geometrical rule. The artist also has a small production of paintings on canvas and frescoes always geometric which also tend towards a certain lyricism.