"Camargo’s reliefs involve no rejection of the visible world in favor of an ideal one. They are an amplification of the visible world, a language which expressed the relative nature of what we see by setting it in the context of the other realities which cannot be seen and which greatly outnumber those that can."
— Guy Brett on Sergio Camargo [1]
Sergio de Camargo (b. 1930 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - d. 1990 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) was a Brazilian sculptor and artist associated with the Neo-Concrete movement in Latin America. Known for his abstract white reliefs and sculptures exploring mass, volume, and space, Camargo pioneered a refined minimalist aesthetic distilling form to its geometric essence. After early studies in Buenos Aires, he further developed his reductive practice in 1950s Paris influenced by mentors Constantin Brancusi and Gaston Bachelard. Seeking to capture an "immaterial reality," his breakthrough came from observing light and shadows interact with cut shapes. Camargo’s sleek wood reliefs arrange cylindrical protrusions to accentuate negative space, with lighting effects becoming equal subjects. As his oeuvre evolved over decades, his modular works incorporated prisms, greater dynamism, and eventually black Belgian marble.
From major retrospectives across Europe and Latin America to works housed in prominent collections internationally, Camargo’s elemental volumes elucidate sculpture’s possibilities through pure plastic language.