On the second floor, in An essay on drawing, professor and print maker Claudio Mubarac has curated a small show of drawings from the gallery’s collection. For Mubarac -- who also curated the exhibit Goeldi/Jardim, printmaking and the compass, which was ranked among the 10 best in the world by Hyperallergic in 2016, one of the leading online art journals of international renown -- organizing this exhibit posed two challenges in particular: “the actual selection itself, owing to the exceptional quality of the works, and the challenge of creation and the diversified meanings that drawing has come to have for artists engaged in such different projects.” In tackling this challenge, Mubarac has selected works by artists from a wide variety of generations, covering the full temporal scope of Raquel Arnaud’s collection.

Here, for example, we find the “Portrait of Margarette” (1920), by Lasar Segall, as well as a work from the collection of old drawings by Arthur Luiz Piza, dating to 1949, along with more recent efforts such as an untitled drawing by Waltercio Caldas (1990), and a work produced by Grinspum in 2016. “The aim has been to assemble a kind of Kunstkammer of drawings where the silence of the works encompasses all at once a multiplicity of horizons, as well as the artists’ various creative processes,” Mubarac explains.

Born in Rio Claro, SP, in 1959, Claudio Mubarac lives and works in São Paulo. Since 2005, he has curated shows at a number of institutions in Brazil, notably, “Print drawing: the graphic work of Evandro Carlos Jardim” (2005), which won the Bravo Award for best exhibit of the year; “Valongo: woodcuts by Fabrício Lopez” (2009), “Four Graphic Essays” (2012/2013), and Imagem(gráfica) 2014/2015, in partnership with Carlos Martins, all for the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; “From ten thousand surfaces: prints of Madalena Hashimoto” (2008), for the Instituto Moreira Salles; “Gilvan Samico: first stories” (2014), Centro Universitário Maria Antônia (USP), with Priscila Sacchettin, and “Goeldi/Jardim: printmaking and the compass” (2015/2016), for the Museu de Arte Contemporânea of the University of São Paulo.