Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 1909 —
São Paulo, Brazil, 1978

From social painting quite similar to the production of Lasar Segall, Yolanda Mohalyi moved, in the early 1960s, to canvases that are milestones in Brazilian informal abstraction. With strong gestures, flowing ink and smooth shapes floating in a broth of color, the artist transfers to the abstract language all the subjective charge of her figurative expressionist painting from the 1940s and 1950s.

Using overlays and transparencies, Mohalyi builds the feeling of depth – perhaps psychic – of his lyrical abstractions, also using the contrast between warm and cold colors to suggest proximity and distance in the various layers of the composition. His canvases are subjective expression without a word outline, forming a pre-verbal field of sensory events, as if they were delicate records of archaic experiences.