An artist’s retreat
High up, on the foothills of the Sierra Blanca range lays an artist’s retreat with magnificent views over Marbella and the Mediterrean Sea. Inspired by this perspective and the rich light of southern Spain, renowned painter Armando Sendin has been producing a prolific body of work that has long since seen him established as the leading representative of Brazilian realism.
Born in Rio de Janeiro of Spanish parents, Armando Sendin spent his early years in São Paulo and Porto Alegre. It was their proximity to the sea, accompanied by a dense and luminous light, which first fuelled the artist in him. Having returned to Spain when still young, he started to draw the olive grove-dominated landscape of Priego de Córdoba. Having recognised his son’s talent, his father enrolled Armando in art classes and introduced him to renowned painters in Córdoba.
The connection with Brazil was re-established when he returned to finish his studies in Santos, and indeed, Brazil and Spain would both continue to figure strongly in his life and his work. After graduating at the University of São Paulo, he won a coveted scholarship to the Sorbonne. “It was the beginning of a new existence,” says Armando. “The whole world was opening up to me, and my desire to learn and explore was tremendous.” Alternating between his studies in Paris and learning the secrets of ceramics at the National Institute in Sèvres, he started to develop a significant body of work that was later exhibited at the School of Fine Arts in Paris.
Having travelled across Europe to study ceramics, he was somewhat of an authority on the topic when he returned to Brazil in 1954. Together with his young wife Sita, an artist whom he had met at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Barcelona, he set up Estudio Moral, a school for artistic ceramics in São Paulo. “We started with 60 students, but soon we attracted a great number, some from as far as Rio, Uruguay and Argentina,” says Sita. After ten successful years, Armando decided the time had come to dedicate himself entirely to painting. “Many of our students had become prominent artists in their own name while others set up schools of their own, so we felt our work was being continued by them.”
They moved back to Santos, where Armando truly flourished as a painter. Guided by the surrealist styles of Dalí and Miró, Armando started to produce abstract works that took little time to gain recognition. Exhibited at prominent Brazilian art exhibitions, these works won prominent prizes and drew increasing interest from abroad, most notably the USA, where his work is favoured by collectors and museums alike. Already a leading light in South American art, his dual love affair with Brazil and Spain lead the couple back to Europe when they settled in Marbella in 1975. “Back then it was still a charming little town around which a small but glamorous and bohemian international community had settled.”
The couple’s friends and clients were themselves a highly interesting and cosmopolitan group of people, often entertained in this lovely hillside villa overlooking Marbella and the sea. “ When we bought the home, the living and sleeping quarters were on one level, with a terrace and then steps leading down to a tropical garden and a swimming pool,” says Armando. “We embellished these parts of the house over the years, but as a painter I needed a studio, so we added another floor where the rooftop terrace was, creating what is in fact an independent apartment that takes in the best of the light and views.” From this studio, with its important south-facing views and early morning northern light, Armando was to continue to prolific output of work.
Works inspired by this light and created within this studio now hang on the walls of collectors and museums in Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, Washington DC and Paris. Indeed, Armando’s enthusiasm for his work remains as strong as ever, his oeuvre set to adorn new museum walls. “My work continues but we are moving to a smaller place near the sea,” says the amiable, cosmopolitan artist. “It’s time for someone else to be inspired by this home and its magnificent views.” Armando has travelled the long journey of an artist, earning the acclaim a creative individual feeds on, and enjoying every step of the way. Unlike the stereotypical figure he is not a tortured soul but a bon vivant whose ability to translate the beauty he sees in the world is an inspiration in itself.
