Photo: Paul Clark

Photos: Paul Clark, Frederico Mendes, Andreas Einsiedel

About Kim Poor

Elizabeth Kimball de Albuquerque Poor is a Brazilian artist working in Rio and London.

She first exhibited at the age of 12 at a large mixed show in Rio de Janeiro amongst other Brazilian artists such as Scliar and Bianco.  At 17 she left Brazil to study Fine Arts at the Parsons School of Design in New York City with Larry Rivers and at Skidmore College in upstate New York where she developed a new technique in painting with ground glass and natural pigments on steel.

During this period she exhibited extensively in Brazil and New York.  In 1982 she enrolled at the Central School of Art in London to pursue her interests in printmaking with Norman Ackroyd R.A.
Her own style and technique of painting using powdered glass and pigments fused on steel was christened “Diaphanism” by Salvador Dali. This term has now in fact been incorporated into the the Oxford English Dictionary. The paintings are fired countless times until she is satisfied with the result. Critical high and low temperatures and a very delicate control of layers of opaque and transparent glass are required in order to achieve depth and colour.
Throughout her training she found that her responses to the formal exercises she was set invariably led to a narrative - a tradition which is strong in South America and this led Kim to explore the myths and fables she was told as a child. In Brazil such stories co-exist with day-to-day happenings and a willingness to suspend disbelief permeates Brazilian culture; this sense of fantasy mixed with reality is explored in all her work. Kim’s links with Brazil remain strong and it is there she gathers inspiration.
The writer and art critic Edward Lucie-Smith commented
“In the dreamlike quality of Kim Poor's  work one  has yet another example of the Magic Realism which can be found in the books of the great Latin America writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llose and Isabel Allende.”
Kim has exhibited all over the world, most recently in London, Brazil, Belgium & Greece, including successful solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio and in São Paulo.
Edward Lucie-Smith on Kim Poor:
“Kim Poor is both a typical and an untypical product of Latin American art. A Brazilian, she (like many leading Latin American artists) found herself through studying abroad, first in the United States, then in Britain. In the USA she studied at the Parsons School of Design, then with the celebrated figurative painter Larry Rivers, at Skidmore College in upstate New York. While at Skidmore, she invented a new technique of painting, using granules of ground glass, fused to sheets of steel. This technique was christened ‘Diaphanism’ by Salvador Dali – a term that has now entered the Oxford English Dictionary. The technique involves fusing specks of pure pigment to the metal that is used as a base. The firings are made many times over, at both high and low temperatures, using both opaque and transparent glass. Though there is obviously a wide technical difference in the way in which various colour effects are achieved, the way in which Kim Poor works has something in common with Seurat’s Pointillism.
Kim Poor, like many South American artists, has tended to work in narrative series, and her Genesis Lyrics pieces are an example of this, poetic evocations which lead the spectator into a dreamlike world, where magical happenings co-exist with everyday events, and where both have equal validity. This world has obvious links with the Magical Realism that characterizes the work of some of the greatest Latin American writers, among them Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and Isabel Allende.
Poor’s work also has a strongly evocative quality, reflected in these illustrations and record sleeves and her later experience as a successful jewellery designer.

Commissions

Albany State College
Princess Yamani
American School, Rio
Skidmore College, New York
Sidgwick and Jackson

Books
1979 ‘Genesis Lyrics’ Illustrated by Kim Poor 2012 ‘Artwear’ (the stones of Burle Marx)
2017 ‘Amazonia Imagined’

Bibliography
1995 ‘Art Today’ by Edward Lucie-Smith
1998 ‘Adam’ by Edward Lucie-Smith
‘Zoo, Animals In Art’  by Edward Lucie-Smith
2009 ‘The Glory of Angels’ by Edward-Lucie-Smith
2017 ‘Amazonia Imagined’ by Edward-Lucie-Smith