Teresinha Soares, Brazilian Artist Behind Erotic-Inflected Works That Slyly Defied Taboos, Dies at 99
Brazilian artist Teresinha Soares, known for erotic-inflected paintings, assemblages, and participatory installations that challenged gender norms in the 1960s and ’70s, died on March 31 in Belo Horizonte at age 99. Her daughter, artist Valeska Soares, told Brazilian newspaper Estado de Minas that she had been hospitalized after breaking her femur and did not recover. Associated with Brazil’s New Figuration movement and sometimes New Objectivity, Soares created vivid, pared-down silhouettes and works such as "Caixa de fazer amor" (1967) and the participatory installation "Camas" (Beds, 1970) at Palácio das Artes in Belo Horizonte. In a 2015 Tate Modern interview, she said the body was the axis of her poetics, and curator Fernanda Morse wrote in 2025 that Soares used bodily gesture and deformation to reposition women from objects to subjects in Brazilian art.
From This Briefing
This story was covered in Restitution Reckonings and Missing Masterpieces Mayhem