Luiz Zerbini at Art Basel Unlimited

‘Os Comedores de Terra | The Earth Eaters’  is “one of those heroic paintings that deals with the end of the world, the end of time”, says the artist. Made for Art Basel Unlimited 2025, this five-meter-wide panoramic painting is mounted on a wooden scaffolding, housing sculptural elements representing precious stones and minerals. Inspired by photographs of gold mines in the Amazon, this work reflects the artist’s ongoing interest in the relationship between nature and humanity in and around Rio de Janeiro. The composition presents a seductive, yet haunting view of a landscape bearing the repercussions of extraction activities, including slash-and-burn farming and logging. In the foreground a mass of gasoline oozes into a pool forming multicoloured swirls with a hypotonic quality. Zerbini explains: “It’s about how the end of the world is visually spectacular […] an epic meant to be seen and admired.”  

In a career, spanning over three decades, Zerbini has developed a complex visual vocabulary rooted at the intersection of figuration and abstraction. He first emerged within the generational (and global) ‘return to painting’ of the 1980s, centred in the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts, Rio de Janeiro and subsequently defined by the landmark exhibition ‘Como vai você Geração 80?’ (How Are You Doing, 80s Generation?, 1984). The installation that augments this painting expands Zerbini’s interest in reprocessing canonical images of Brazil, the conceptual focus of his 2022 survey exhibition ‘The Same Story is Never The Same’ at Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP). By incorporating sweeping curves, fluid textures and vivid colours, the artist emulates the intoxicating effects of the sights and sounds of the rainforest.