Marcello Nitsche

Marcello Nitsche was born in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, in 1942.
He was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and a multifaceted artist. He obtained a degree in Drawing from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation (FAAP) in São Paulo. In 1969, he received the São Paulo Municipality Prize for the most relevant research work at the São Paulo International Biennial. At the beginning of his career, he worked as a printmaker and later focused on painting. He became interested in Pop Art and created paintings inspired by the image-making process used in comics. In 1969, he made his first film entitled “Acrylic.” He explored experimental cinema in Super-8 format with works such as “The Sea” and “Smoke Cube.” He co-directed the short film “Habitable Surfaces” in 1973 and created “Self-Portrait” and “Sewing” in 1975, which demonstrated his growing interest in appropriating established genres and elements of artistic tradition.
Since the 1980s, the gestural nature of painting and the interweaving of brushstrokes have become central themes in his work. The artist appropriates free brushstrokes and spontaneous gestures, transforming them into graphic signs.
He has sculptures in public spaces, such as “Garatuja” in 1978, a modular structure installed in Praça da Sé, and “Three-dimensional Brushstroke” in 2000, in Parque da Luz, both in São Paulo. In paintings created from 2001 onwards, he draws inspiration from barcodes and explores vertical lines and number sequences.
He has held over a hundred exhibitions in various countries, including Brazil, France, and the United Kingdom. His work is featured in several Brazilian museums, such as Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Museum of Contemporary Art of USP, Pinacoteca do Estado do Paraná (Curitiba), Brazilian Museum of Art of FAAP (São Paulo), Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, and the artistic collection of the Palácio dos Bandeirantes.
He passed away in São Paulo in 2017.