Background
Almir Mavignier, full named Almir da Silva Mavignier, was born on May 1, 1925, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
He had lived in Germany for more than 50 years.
Almir Mavignier, full named Almir da Silva Mavignier, was born on May 1, 1925, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
He had lived in Germany for more than 50 years.
Almir Mavignier finished high school in 1946 and pursued his artistic training with a painter Árpád Szenès in Rio de Janeiro.
Later, Mavignier received a scholarship which allowed him to enter in 1951 the Académie de La Grande Chaumière in Paris.
Three years later, Almir Mavignier, without speaking German, became a student of the Ulm School of Design (closed in 1968) where he had studied visual design till 1958 under the tutelage of Max Bill and Josef Albers
Almir Mavignier started his career at the Psychiatric Hospital of Engenho de Dentro in Rio de Janeiro. Along with Abraham Palatnik, Ivan Serpa and Mario Pedrosa the artist explored how patients were able to create artworks without knowing any artistic techniques or theories. In 1946, Almir Mavignier with the psychiatrist Nise da Silveira organized a workshop for inmates in the hospital. Almir Mavignier had directed the studio for five years.
As to the artist’s painting activity, in 1949 he presented his early abstract creations at his debut group exhibition in Rio de Janeiro along with Ivan Serpa, Abraham Palatnik and Mário Pedrosa. A year later, Mavignier, in collaboration with Leon Dégand and Lourival Gomes Machado, held an exhibition of Palatnik’s artworks at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo. It was there where Almir Mavignier had his first solo show the following year.
Since the beginning of the 1950s, the artist devoted himself to the Concrete Art. So, in the middle of 1950s, Mavignier produced his first drawings with grid structures, then switched to the Optical Art and also created some monochrome pictures.
In 1958, the artist joined the art group Zero where he had worked for some time with Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, Günther Uecker, Lucio Fontana and Piero Dorazio. The next year, Mavignier founded his personal studio in Ulm, Germany where he worked as a freelance graphic designer.
A year later, Almir Mavignier co-organized the exhibition named New trends in Zagreb, Croatia. He had curated it till 1961.
In 1964, the painter was invited at his first Documenta exhibition in Kassel which was followed by the similar show four years later. In 1965, Mavignier occupied the post of painting professor at the State School of Fine Arts in Hamburg. In three years, the artist founded there his own studio.
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Composition
Punctured Composition
Cinetic Composition
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Reflection on Lemon Yellow
Two Squares
Convex Square
Yellow on Black (from the Punctum Series)
Shapes
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Composition from the Punctum Series
Composition in Blue
5 Bll: Color Variations
Blue and Green Structure on Brown
Violet-green Intersections
Nine Squares
Central rotation / White
Convex Concave II
Red-yellow-white Convex
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Orange, Yellow and White on Green
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Abstract Composition
Monochrome / White
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Concrete blue
Almir Mavignier married Sigrid Quarch, a teacher of painting at the Hamburg School of Fine Arts, in 1965. The couple had a son named Delmar who was born three years later.
He was a Hungarian-Jewish abstract painter.
