The Pink Cloud of Paris

Patricia Leite’s gaze is contagious. When she asks her friends to send her photographs that might inspire her to paint, it’s not so much about adopting their point of view as it is about sharing with them her way of seeing the world. Ever since I began living and thinking with her work, I often find that a certain sky at dawn, a certain branch silhouetted against the sky, or a certain abandoned lounge chair on a terrace remind me of her, even though I’m not one of those who send her their images.

In the early 1980s, she took part in a movement marking a return to painting that was sweeping through Brazil and the rest of the world at the time. Her painting from that period reflects influences ranging from Klee to Volpi. Abstract, organic, and gestural, it is associated with the concept of “sensitive geometry,” a term often used at the time to characterize Constructivist production in Latin America.

This was followed by about fifteen years during which Leite…