Leda Catunda

Leda Catunda (1961) lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.

Leda Catunda has constructed a visual lexicon shifting between mass culture and craftwork, employing abstract painting and sculpture as much as pop art’s collage and appropriation procedures. Making use of the imagistic voraciousness of our time, the artist creates haptic works – stuffed, frilled and sewn on domestic materials – turning the support itself into content. The artist’s insistence on manual making nonetheless allows for an intimate dimension, alluding to a simultaneously familiar and personal atmosphere. With the means at hand and conserving the traces of her process, Catunda’s «soft world» insinuates a critique of the affirmation of identity through consumerism, reworking textile waste and the mechanisms of commercial culture.

Her inclusion in Como Vai Você?, Geração 80, a watershed group show at Parque Lage Visual Art School in Rio de Janeiro in 1984, cemented Catunda’s pivotal position in Brazilian contemporary art and ushered in a revitalization in painting. Her works explore the limits of textures and materials, being characterized by her «soft paintings» over towels, bedclothes, leather, velvet and silk.

The artist is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Sharjah Art Foundation running through 8th February 2026.

Catunda’s solo exhibitions include Favorita, Emanuela Campoli, Paris (2025), I like to like what others are liking, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah (2025), Euforia, ICA Milano Foundation (2023).

Her work has been featured in several group exhibitions including Ação à distância, Kubik Gallery, Lisboa (2024), Giros e Afetos, Nara Roesler, São Paulo (2024), Fullgás – Artes visuais e anos 1980 no Brasil, CCBB, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro (2024), Rituals of the Everyday, Collegium, Arévalo (2024).

She has participated in four São Paulo Biennials (1983, 1985, 1994 and 2018). Retrospectives and surveys of her work have been held at Pinoteca do Estado de
São Paulo (2009); Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Rio de Janeiro, and Museo de Arte Moderna (MAM Rio), Rio de Janeiro (2014); Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo (2016);
São Paulo Museum of Modern Art (MAM), São Paulo (2019);the Museu de Arte Latino Americano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), Buenos Aires (2021).

Numerous public collections contain her works, including Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam ; MOCA – Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles ; Blanton Museum of Art – The University of Texas at Austin, Austin ; Acervo Contemporâneo UFF, Niterói, Brasil ; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, USA ;
Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota, Japan; among others.