BRUNO NOVELLI: Sol de ouro: Museu Inimá de Paula – MG

The Yellow Hour

Over the past 15 years, Bruno Novelli (born in Fortaleza, Brazil, 1980; lives in São Paulo, Brazil) has been investigating nature as a discipline. Rather than solely mimicking the organic quality of its forms and elements, he seeks to heighten and reimagine them so as to emphasize their exuberance and opulence. From this process arises an inventive body of work with refined technical and compositional polish, which positions Novelli as a prominent representative of fantastic realism in contemporary painting.

This exhibition brings together works dating from 2012 to the present. Throughout this journey, one can observe how the artist’s work, which initially intertwined elements from the digital and natural worlds through a saturated, psychedelic palette, has gradually evolved toward the current tropical and idyllic compositions where a symbiosis between delirious fauna and flora triumphs.

Novelli’s trajectory arises from the crossover of heterogeneous repertoires ranging from experiences in the Amazon rainforest and interactions with Indigenous artists and collectives to botanical illustrations and history books, with a special emphasis on mythologies and bestiaries from Antiquity and the Middle Ages. From this framework of references, the artist creates a distinctive universe filled with voluptuous and anthropomorphic animals and beings. Carrying reminiscences of a collective prehistoric imaginary, his paintings refer to an undefined time that both recalls a distant past—away from the triumph of Homo sapiens over other species—and encompasses a futuristic projection of an untouched environment yet to be discovered.

Beyond the figuration of immersive and sublime landscapes, an overview of his body of work reveals scenes that are, at times, epic, pervaded by animals poised to attack and engaged in battle. Although undeniably fictional, the representation of these clashes reinforces the impression that Novelli’s work strives for fidelity to the processes of nature given that predation, violence, and conflict are common occurrences in animal life. It is also worth noting that many of his invented beings have names and appear across multiple canvases, contributing to a sense of continuity and cohesion within his work.

At the Inimá de Paula Museum, Novelli presents for the very first time a series of recent works, all produced in 2025. In these pieces, he momentarily sets aside the characteristic green tones in search of shimmering colors ranging from yellow to ochre-brown.  In the Sol de Ouro [Gold Sun] series, Earth’s life-giving star bathes the images in abundant light, creating a dense, warm atmosphere with a hint of humidity, captured somewhere between sunrise and dusk.

These works reaffirm approaches present in Novelli’s recent production: through a more uniform palette the artist proposes a fusion of fauna and flora suggesting that interspecies relations unfold as a continuous exercise in codependence, in an amalgamated balance. Some of these canvases also follow a compositional approach he has been exploring since 2024: with wider open areas, the winding rivers and dense forests in the background gain greater prominence than in earlier works. A unique atmosphere thus emerges, in which the yellow hour of light becomes a metaphor for a state of enchantment.

Bruno Novelli’s practice insists on painting as both language and vehicle, trusting in its ability to renew imaginaries and awaken new perceptions of our place within the whole that surrounds us. Like a sensory experience, his works invite us to explore a hybrid world where nature is not merely a backdrop but the protagonist of a rich and immersive visual narrative in which reality and fantasy intertwine with the exuberance of life.

Thierry Freitas