Leonilson

José Leonilson (1957–1993) was a Brazilian artist who came of age as the country emerged from military dictatorship. Influenced by Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark and Mira Schendel and associated with the Geração 80 generation, he moved from assemblage to drawing and painting and, after his HIV diagnosis in 1991, to small embroidered works. The son of cloth merchants, he gave textiles a central place in his practice.