Falling in Love with an Empty Man: The Work of José Leonilson

In general, I do not want to meet the artists I fall in love with. I’m keen to preserve the relationship between the art and myself. But that changed when I saw José Leonilson’s work in person for the first time, in the exhibition “Empty Man” at the Americas Society in New York.

In Brazil, Leonilson is considered one of the most important artists of his generation. Born in the northeastern city of Fortaleza, he came of age in the 1980s, in the years immediately following Brazil’s twenty-year dictatorship. Emerging from oppressive times, he and his peers embraced the pleasures of painting, and they made bright and figurative work. But Leonilson’s art was also uniquely personal and literary; words float alone or in poetic arrangements (“here comes

takes a troubling turn when Leonilson discovers he is HIV positive. “I feel empty … with no direction—I simply do not know what to do,” he softly says. He felt paralyzed; his Catholic family, and even some of his closest friends, did not know he was gay. His loneliness intensified as he realized no one he loved could tend to his wounds when he bled. “Now my works are all that I really have,” he said.