How Simões de Assis Built a Global Platform for Brazilian Art

In the past few years, Brazil has been in the spotlight of the international art world, beginning with Adriano Pedrosa’s Biennial and continuing with the Royal Academy in London hosting the decades-spanning survey “Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism” (January-April 2025), as well as the Brazil-France Season, a cultural initiative that included events such as “Horizontes: contemporary Brazilian art unveiled at the Grand Palais.” Concurrently, the arrival of new branches of contemporary art gallery Mendes Wood DM in both Paris and New York further solidified Brazil’s growing presence in the European and American markets, helping to reshape how Brazilian art is understood abroad. Even at the last Frieze London, the themed section “Echoes in the Present,” curated by Jareh Das and positioned at the center of the fair, foregrounded an intergenerational dialogue between artists from Brazil, Africa and their diasporas, bringing established and emerging Brazilian galleries into direct focus. Earlier, at Frieze New York, the Focus Award was presented to Mitre Galeria, one of Brazil’s dynamic young galleries rising toward international visibility.

At Art Basel Miami Beach this week, Brazilian galleries are again well-represented, as the fair, now under the leadership of Bridget Finn, has sought to position itself as a central nexus between the Americas. Among them is Simões de Assis, one of Brazil’s leading and longest-established galleries, which has shaped the country’s contemporary art scene through a cross-generational program that bridges Brazilian Modernism and today’s most compelling emerging voices. Simões de Assis is also one of the rare examples of a family business that has not only survived but thrived across two generations, with a baton pass that occurred while the first generation was still active and able to guide the next. When we spoke ahead of the fair, Guilherme de Assis retraced the history behind this intergenerational vision.

Simões de Assis was founded in 1984 in Curitiba (Paraná) by Waldir Simões de Assis Filho, who had studied architecture but was deeply embedded in the local artistic community. When a university colleague asked him for advice on selling a family art collection, the experience (that of helping place several works with friends while explaining their significance) made him realize that he could manage an architecture studio while also developing an art gallery with a serious, structured program.

At that time, De Assis Filho was in close contact with major collector Gilberto Chateaubriand, who helped name the gallery. Guilherme recalled his father having lunch with Chateaubriand in Curitiba, explaining the idea of opening a space. When asked whether he had chosen a name, his father admitted he had not. Chateaubriand suggested using his surname, noting its strong sound and the fact that many international galleries were named after their founders. Convinced, he returned home and opened Simões de Assis in 1984, establishing from the outset a program that combined Brazilian and Latin American work with modernism, the Concrete and Neo-Concrete movements, kinetic practices and the contemporary generation of the 1980s.

From early on, the gallery gained recognition for preserving and promoting the estates of key artists, including Cícero Dias, Abraham Palatnik, Carmelo Arden Quin, Niobe Xandó and others, often collaborating closely with families and foundations. Equally important was its commitment to alternating historical and contemporary exhibitions, weaving connections across decades and helping articulate the broader history of Brazilian and Latin American modern and contemporary art.

This cross-generational approach became fully embedded in the program in 2011, when the second generation, Guilherme and his sister Laura, launched a separate contemporary-art space, SIM Galeria, focused on younger and more experimental practices. Located next door to their father’s gallery, SIM allowed a younger generation to craft its own vision while maintaining shared principles. “Sometimes we would bring historical artists into dialogue with the contemporary program at SIM,” Guilherme recalls. “It was fascinating to combine a ’60s artist with someone having their first solo show — sometimes even their first show in Curitiba.”

In 2018, Simões de Assis, the original gallery, expanded by opening a new two-floor space in São Paulo’s Jardins neighborhood, near Oscar Freire, a central location ideal for visibility among collectors, institutions and art-world visitors. Designed by Arquea Arquitetos, the building features a minimalist, adaptable and art-centric architecture: porous yet secluded, with shifting access points and natural light modulation through a white perforated-metal skin layered over part of the façade. Inside, the flexible floor plan features a large open exhibition block, flanked by circulation corridors, allowing for multiple spatial configurations.

By 2020, the gallery formally merged its historical and contemporary programs under one structure, consolidating both generations’ visions into a single entity that could map relationships across time while remaining anchored in Brazilian and Latin American art, even as it began introducing international artists rarely shown in Brazil.

When asked whether certain elements had carried across the generations—something distinctive in the gallery’s legacy or in Brazilian art—Guilherme reflected that there are indeed patterns, whether in materiality or formal approach, that link different moments of Brazilian production. Across Latin America, geometric abstraction remains one of the region’s most enduring and recognizable visual traditions. Guilherme noted that since they started working with Mexican artist Gabriel de la Mora, he has observed similar historical continuities in Mexico, including Pre-Columbian systems, Aztec drawing and carved stones, highlighting the deep and persistent dialogue between Indigenous visual languages and modern abstraction.

While it is common to attribute the rise of geometric abstraction in Brazil and South America to Bauhaus émigrés such as Max Bill, who introduced ideas around industrial design, rational composition and visual experimentation that resonated with young artists in the mid-20th Century, that influence is only one layer. The region’s abstraction also drew from internal and regional sources: from the modernist foundations of Joaquín Torres-García and the Montevideo School, with artists like Carmelo Arden Quin emerging directly from his teachings; from Pre-Columbian, Andean and Mesoamerican visual systems; from the Río de la Plata’s concrete and Madí movements; and from the dense network of artists who lived in Paris in the postwar decades. Figures such as Abraham Palatnik, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Hélio Oiticica, Carmelo Arden Quin and Jesús Rafael Soto developed their own languages that were more organic, interactive and socially engaged, beyond the Bauhaus lineage. The launch of the São Paulo Biennial in 1951 further amplified these exchanges, providing Brazilian artists direct access to European and Latin American abstraction. “They shared ideas, influenced each other, and brought all of that back home,” Guilherme says. “Abraham Palatnik, Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez were all in France in the ’50s and ’60s. There was a real community there.”

As a result, geometric abstraction in Latin America emerged as a hybrid formation—part European modernism, part Indigenous visual heritage, part regional experimentation and profoundly shaped by cross-border dialogues across Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico. It is a lineage that Simões de Assis has long championed.

Turning to the younger artists the gallery represents, Guilherme notes that many emerging voices express abstraction differently, not strictly geometric yet still resonant with the broader lineage. “You do have artists like Mano Penalva and Thalita Hamaoui,” he said. “They’re abstract, but in a completely different way, not strictly geometric, but still part of that conversation.” Brazil’s artistic landscape contains multiple threads of continuity. Zeh Palito, for instance, who has shown also with Perrotin, can engage in a meaningful dialogue with modern figures like Heitor dos Prazeres, who depicted Black daily life in Rio in the early 20th Century.

The gallery’s booth in Miami will challenge the usual expectation that Brazilian and Latin American art align solely with concretism and geometric abstraction. Instead, it stages a cross-generational dialogue among artists whose poetics intersect through investigations of landscape and expanded approaches to abstraction, from strict geometry to atmospheric, tactile, process-based and more metaphysical or ethereal forms. The presentation weaves connections between historical estates such as Palatnik’s kinetic rigor, Carmelo Arden Quin’s Madí geometries, Dias’ lyrical modernism and Carlos Cruz-Diez’s synesthetic thinking, and the sensorial, materially and emotionally driven abstractions of contemporary figures like Thalita Hamaoui or Diambe, as well as the intimate, narrative-inflected material experimentation of Felipe Suzuki and Mika Takahashi, among others. “In our programming, both in exhibitions and at art fairs, we’re always trying to make those connections,” Guilherme emphasizes. “The gallery is always thinking about how to bring generations together.”

This approach determines how the gallery selects new artists. Choices are based not only on artistic quality but also on how an artist supports the internal coherence of the program. “We always think about the dialogue: with the historical movement, with the estates that Simões de Assis represents,” he explains. “Whether the artist is Brazilian or international, we think about the conversations we can create. Otherwise, you don’t have a program; you have a list of names. For us, it’s about identity. When a collector enters our booth at a fair or visits the gallery, we want them to understand what they can expect immediately. Everything needs to connect, or you become a large gallery with many artists but no coherence.”

At the same time, he acknowledges how the visibility of Brazilian artists in Venice, London and through the France-Brazil Season has increased international awareness, and the gallery’s own international presence has grown accordingly, with placements in Asia, Europe, the United States and Mexico. Guilherme notes that one major challenge is expanding awareness of Brazilian artists internationally, particularly in relation to modernism and postwar modernism. While many are widely recognized within Brazil, they remain less well known abroad, despite having meaningful historical connections to Europe and, in some cases, affinities with Asian artistic traditions. To address this, Guilherme believes in the importance of creating “real connections”—collaborations with galleries in other countries that can help develop an estate or a contemporary artist’s presence. “That’s our main strategy: to identify which galleries abroad make sense for an estate or for a living artist,” he says. “Museums, curators and collectors need real access to the work; they need to spend time with it. So having a partner abroad who develops the artist alongside Simões is essential.”

As an example, he cited the estate of Emanuel Araújo, a foundational figure in Brazil’s Afro-Brazilian artistic movement who founded a museum and donated a significant portion of his collection to it. For this estate, the team sought an ideal partner abroad and ultimately chose Jack Shainman Gallery as the most meaningful context for international development. Most recently, Simões de Assis has begun collaborating with Marianne Boesky for the representation of Thalita Hamaoui, resulting in a sold-out debut show in New York last May. Both galleries are presenting the artist in Miami, and one of her works, recently acquired by Jorge Perez’s personal collection, will be on view in his space, El Espacio 23. “We become partners, and that’s the main goal—to develop something together,” Guilherme says, noting how, while we’re seeing so many galleries closing, perhaps the future really is collaboration between galleries within a global network. “If we work with another gallery, artists gain access to collectors we could take much longer to reach. We’re far from the U.S. and Europe. Yet, we see how much international collectors want to learn about Brazil,” he adds, pointing to the most recent São Paulo Biennial, when museum boards, curators and collectors were genuinely eager to understand the scene.

<img decoding="async" class="wp-image-1602648 size-full-width" src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/Jean-Michel-Othoniel_Under-Another-Sun_Simoes-de-Assis-Sao-Paulo_2024_curated-by-Marc-Pottier_photo-Estudio-em-Obra_Courtesy-of-Simoes-de-Assis-and-Jean-Michel-Othoniel-ADAGP-Paris-2024.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="A white gallery shows suspended glass bead sculptures in green, pink and purple alongside linear wall works made of stacked glass elements." width="970" height="647" data-caption='“Jean-Michel Othoniel, Under Another Sun,” curated by Marc Pottier, at Simões de Assis São Paulo in 2024. <span class=”media-credit”>Photo Estúdio em Obra | Courtesy of Simões de Assis and Jean-Michel Othoniel : ADAGP, Paris, 2024</span>’>

Fairs remain a central strategy for providing Brazilian artists with international visibility—while most galleries cut back on them, Simões de Assis has increased the number it attends. At the same time, Guilherme emphasized that Brazil must find ways to encourage people to return to the country. Tax regulation remains the most significant barrier to growth. “Navigating Brazil as an international gallery is extremely complicated,” he explains. “We used to have tax benefits during art fairs, but the Brazilian tax structure around art is outdated and needs reform. The laws are 70 years old—from late 1940s, early 1950s—and they’ve barely changed.”

Even Brazilian collectors are eager to gain access to international artists, and the gallery continues to introduce them to local audiences, showcasing figures such as Gabriel de la Mora, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Olga de Amaral and others. As Guilherme notes, this comes with financial risks: unless artists produce locally, collectors must pay around 43 percent in taxes. Yet the response has been strong: Gabriel de la Mora’s first show nearly sold out, and subsequent shows by him and Othoniel have had great success, including new commissions. “Taxes are the main obstacle, but we’re lobbying, and I believe it will change,” he says, adding that the positive sign is that more international artists are now interested in showing in Brazil.

<img decoding="async" class="wp-image-1602643 size-full-width" src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/Frieze-London_Diambe_2025_photo-by-Mikhail-Mishin_Courtesy-of-Simoes-de-Assis.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="A fair booth with white walls presents a row of small, vividly colored paintings alongside a central platform holding several slender bronze sculptures." width="970" height="647" data-caption='Simões de Assis at Frieze London in 2025, featuring Diambe. <span class=”media-credit”>Photo by Mikhail Mishin | Courtesy of Simões de Assis</span>’>

Despite structural obstacles, Guilherme describes the Brazilian market as resilient, energized by a new generation of engaged collectors. “There’s a new generation of collectors—more engaged, more curious. At MASP, Pinacoteca and other institutions, you see new patron groups forming. They visit fairs, travel with museums, do studio visits,” he says. And these collectors are not limited to São Paulo or Rio. The gallery is experiencing growth in more decentralized regions, such as Santa Catarina, where Simões de Assis has opened its third space, and in interior cities like Ponta Grossa and Camboriú. “We’re developing collections across these regions,” he adds. Young collectors often start with artists from their own generation, then gradually transition to historical material. “The gallery has been creating these generational dialogues for 40 years, and you can now see them reflected in museum displays and private homes. That’s the most rewarding part.”

Looking ahead, the gallery’s priority remains enhancing its international visibility and global appreciation for Brazilian art, placing artists in significant public and private collections. For this reason, they create multi-year strategies for each artist, Guilherme explains, identifying relevant institutions, curators and galleries to target. “These strategies take about four or five years; we plan far in advance, always working together with the artist. I think that’s one of our strengths.”

Still, he acknowledges that this long-term perspective was enabled by the thoughtful generational transition, which secured the gallery’s solidity and sustainability. His father remains closely involved, but he introduced his children to art and their artists from a very young age. “We grew up immersed in this world. We’ve had artists with us since the very first year, and the quality has always been consistent,” he reflects. “Laura and I follow the path he established, continuing these long-term relationships and building new ones. It’s absolutely a family business, and we’re proud that the second generation has been able to improve things while still being supported by the first.”

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