Patricia Leite brings her inner landscapes to Venice with "Cold Water"

For the first time in its exhibition history, the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice opens the doors of Palazzetto Tito to a South American artist. From May 6 to July 27, 2025, the historic Venetian institution will host the first solo exhibition in Italy of Brazilian painter Patricia Leite (Belo Horizonte, 1955), offering the public an opportunity to discover the work of one of the most poetic and visionary figures on the contemporary painting scene. The exhibition, titled Cold Water and curated by Milovan Farronato, is part of the cycle that the Foundation has been dedicating for some time to outstanding personalities in international painting. A project that aims to return an in-depth look at the most relevant voices of the contemporary scene, through exhibitions designed to intertwine with the specificity of the Venetian space and to dialogue with the intensity of its history.

A painting made of pauses, thresholds and breaths

The works presented in the exhibition were created especially for the occasion, in the studio Leite maintains in São Paulo, Brazil. In Cold Water, the artist brings to Venice visions that seem to emerge from a more intimate and mental dimension, where the geography of places merges with that of emotions. Patricia Leite’s painting does not depict, but dreams. Her canvases accommodate suspended images, never descriptive, always evanescent. A vertical waterfall becomes a slowly descending thought; a cave opens as a refuge away from the clamor of the world; fireworks reflect on the flickering water, like memories that time has begun to blur.

These works seem born to inhabit Palazzetto Tito, a place the curatorship restores as a treasure chest of memories and possibilities: a space where time slows down and images breathe, becoming open thresholds to the invisible.

The meaning of “Cold Water”

The title of the exhibition takes its cue from a painting of the same name in the exhibition, but it also refers to a broader sensory and symbolic experience. Cold Water, in English, evokes the chill caused by a jet of cold water on the skin: a sudden shock, an awakening. Similarly, Leite’s painting seeks to bring the viewer back to an essential, vulnerable, authentic dimension. In the Brazilian artist’s universe, cold water becomes a metaphor for an inner clarity that is never fully defined, but which, precisely in its immediacy, invites deep contact with a sense of presence. Each work thus becomes a passageway through which to traverse emotions, memories and insights. The exhibition also includes works in which the threshold between abstraction and figuration becomes more subtle, as in the case of the painting Chandelier (2025), where a constellation of lights is arranged in a fragile and irregular geometry. The points of light seem to oscillate between referring to a domestic object, the chandelier, precisely, and dissolving into a natural or cosmic phenomenon, such as a distant galaxy.

Leite plays with the matter of light, making it alive, uncertain, never quite graspable. In his works, each light source becomes part of an emotional map, where nothing is definitive but everything is gently evoked. Painting, in this key, becomes a contemplative gesture, memory in suspension. The encounter between Patricia Leite’s poetics and Venice is also symbolic. The city, with its motionless waters and fragile silences, seems to be the ideal place to welcome a research such as that of the Brazilian artist, who has always tended toward the unspoken, the unseen, the moment that escapes. The rooms of Palazzetto Tito lend themselves perfectly to host this suspension: not neutral galleries, but rooms that hold ancient voices, overlooks that frame the slow passage of time. The realization of the Cold Water exhibition was made possible thanks to the support of Mendes Wood DM and Thomas Dane Gallery, which have accompanied the artist’s journey for years.

Notes about the artist

Patricia Leite lives and works in São Paulo. Her painting moves between memory, light and abstraction, with a focus on landscapes and everyday suggestions. Through layers of color and delicate textures, Leite builds compositions that lie between figuration and abstraction, inviting the viewer to silent contemplation. His research draws on both the history of painting and intimate, diaristic images. Among his major solo exhibitions are: Olho d’água at Tomie Ohtake Institute, São Paulo (2025); Paisagem de Lenda at Thomas Dane Gallery, London (2024); Mantiqueira at Mendes Wood DM, New York (2022); Caninana at Thomas Dane Gallery (2021); Vamos chamar o vento in São Paulo (2020); solo show at The Arts Club, London (2019); Olha pro céu, meu amor in Brussels (2018); Saudades do Brasil in São Paulo (2015); Contra o Céu at Nara Roesler, São Paulo (2009); Outra Praia at Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte (2005).

He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Galáxias (Brussels, 2024), Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato en conversation... (Paris, 2024), Dreaming of Spilliaert (Retranchement, 2024), Linhas Tortas and also Esfingico Frontal (São Paulo, 2023), Calor Universal (Pace Gallery, New York, 2022), Days of Inertia (Retranchement, 2021), Prelude: Melancholy of the Future (Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, 2020), Earth Trembles (Naples, 2019), Nightfall (Brussels, 2018), Mínimo, múltiplo, comum (São Paulo, 2018), Aprendendo com Dorival Caymmi - Civilização Praieira (São Paulo, 2016). His works are part of important public and private collections, including the Pinault Collection (Paris), the São Paulo State Art Gallery, the Fiorucci Art Trust (London), the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (Vienna), the Cranford Collection (London), the Loewe Collection (Madrid), and the Museu de Arte da Pampulha (Belo Horizonte).

Patricia Leite brings her inner landscapes to Venice with "Cold Water"

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