Galatea

About the Gallery
Led by partners Antonia Bergamin, Conrado Mesquita, and Tomás Toledo, Galatea has two neighboring spaces in São Paulo: one located at Rua Oscar Freire, 379, and the new space at Rua Padre João Manoel, 808. The gallery also has a location in Salvador, at Rua Chile, 22, in the historic center of the Bahian capital.

Galatea was born from the different and complementary paths and experiences of its founding partners: Antonia Bergamin, who was managing partner of a large gallery in São Paulo; Conrado Mesquita, an art dealer and collector specializing in discovering great works in unlikely places; and Tomás Toledo, a curator who contributed to the historic institutional renewal of MASP, leaving in 2022 as chief curator.

Focused on modern and contemporary Brazilian art, it represents and sells works by both established names in the national art scene and emerging contemporary talents, while also promoting the rediscovery of historical artists. Conceived with the purpose of valuing the relationships that give life to art, the gallery entered the market to reinvent and deepen the connections between artists, gallerists, and collectors.

About the Presentation
Galatea will present work by Ubi Bava in a solo presentation at Independent 20th Century. Ubi Bava (1915–1988) was a painter, draftsman, architect, and professor whose work shifted between geometric abstraction, kinetic art, and optical research, positioning perception as an active, structuring force. The presentation situates this investigation within a contemporary context, where questions of space, viewer participation, and visual instability regain urgency. The presentation places Bava’s compositions in dialogue with the brutalist architecture of the Breuer that similarly explores structure, volume, and perception. In this encounter, the artist’s paintings and objects acquire a renewed depth, becoming sensitive extensions of the architectural space.