Wanda Pimentel

The Brazilian artist Wanda Pimentel played a key role in global feminist art, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. Through her representations of domestic spaces and everyday objects, the artist questioned the role of women in contemporary consumer society.

Pimentel trained at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-RJ) beginning in 1965 with artist Ivan Serpa. The hard lines, geometric forms, and bright, smooth colored surfaces that characterize her work show the influence of the Brazilian constructivist collective Grupo Frente, in which Serpa was a founding member.

Pimentel is best known for her series “Envolvimiento” (which translates to “entanglement” or “involvement”), and one work from this series is in the Art Institute’s collection. The series presents fragmented female bodies within domestic environments, painted with bright colors and organized in flat planes separated by precise lines. Stylistically, the series is in dialogue with the work of Pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein, while the fractured bodies and household objects make a political statement about the invisibility of domestic labor.

Major museums including the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Pinacoteca São Paulo have hosted exhibitions of Pimentel’s work. Several institutions—including MAM-RJm Museo de Arte Latinoamericano, Buenos Aires, and Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Niterói—along with private collectors have her pieces in their collections.