E. Leffingwell, The Keeper's Memory, The Kim Esteve Collection and a Narrative History of Chácara Flora, São Paulo: Editora Terceiro Nome, 2003, p. 196 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
Expressively painted in oil on wood, Mario Gruber’s large scale and characteristically mannered portrait with a sense of a carved Olmec head is among the vibrant paintings distinguishing the breadth of the Esteve collection. As a young man Gruber had studied sculpture at the Escola de Belas Artes in São Paulo with the Brazilian master Emilio Di Cavalcanti. With the support of a scholarship from the French government in 1949 he studied in Paris and in the early 1950s met and studied mural painting with Diego Rivera in Chile. In the 1970s he set up an atelier for several important Brazilian artists including Wesley Duke Lee and Frederico Nasser, and in 1979 established a workshop in New York City.