Remembering Lucia Laguna, Rodrigo Cass, and Nelson Garrido
This week, we honor a Brazilian painter inspired by nature and another who drew on Catholicism, and a Venezuelan photographer who challenged power.
In Memoriam is published every Wednesday afternoon and honors those we recently lost in the art world.
Lucia Laguna (1941–2026)
Brazilian painter and collage artist
The Brazilian artist drew from her immediate surroundings in Rio de Janeiro’s lush North Zone in her paintings and collages. She exhibited her work at the 2012 São Paulo Biennial and received numerous solo shows across the United States, South America, and Europe.
"Lucia had an urgent curiosity about the art that informed the development of her own practice, but was undeniably inspired by her immediate surroundings in Brazil," gallerist Sadie Coles told Hyperallergic. "The construction of her compositions, depicting the flora and fauna surrounding her studio, often connected verdant portals of different viewpoints or arrangements that were suggestive of the view of Rio from her window.”
Nelson Garrido (1952–2026)
Venezuelan photographer who challenged power
The Venezuelan photographer's radically raw works interrogated power, religion, violence, and eroticism over a more than half-century practice, despite facing relentless censorship from church and state alike. He became the first photographer to win Venezuela’s National Prize for Visual Art in 1991, won the 2021 International Association of Art Critics Venezuelan Chapter Master of Arts Award, as well as a number of other prizes he rejected.
Carlos Alonso (1929–2026)
Argentine painter, draftsman, and printmaker
The Argentine artist's socialist realist and new realist works gave visual form to the nation's cultural heritage and dark political history. He won Argentina's prestigious Platinum Konex Award twice, and exhibited widely across Latin America and Europe, including the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana in Cuba, and galleries across the United Kingdom and Italy.
