Intermedia artist, illustrator, designer, painter, photographer. Regina Vater is a pioneer in ecology-related art, and part of her work references indigenous and African cosmologies. Her art includes installations (more than 300, since 1970), art books (as a designer and conceptual artist), visual poetry, photography, and experimental filming, activities she has carried out since 1973. Regina Vater was one of the first Brazilian artists to work with video and performance in 1974 and 1975.
She studied drawing and painting at Frank Schaeffer’s (1917-2008) studio from 1958 to 1962, and was also a pupil of Iberê Camargo (1914-1994), from 1962 to 1965, in Rio de Janeiro. In the early 1960s she got into the Faculdade Nacional de Arquitetura (National School of Architecture), currently Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (School of Architecture and Urbanism) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – FAU/UFRJ, where she remained until 1964, when her studies were interrupted. In that year, she has her first solo exhibition, at the Alpendre Gallery, in Rio de Janeiro.
In the early 1970s, she moves to São Paulo and works as an assistant director at advertising agencies DPZ and MPM. In 1972, Vater wins an award by the União Nacional de Arte Moderna (National Union of Modern Art) and is granted a trip abroad to visit New York for the first time, where she maintains contact and works with artist Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980). She holds a solo exhibition in New York, at the Bleeker Cinema Gallery in 1975.
Upon returning to Brazil, Regina Vater takes a course in super-8 film at Escola Griffe in São Paulo, and in 1979 she organizes the exhibition Contemporary Brazilian Works on Paper: 49 artists at the Nobé Gallery, the first exhibition of Brazilian contemporary and experimental art in New York. As a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, she returns to New York in 1980 to develop the research on installations she had begun in the previous decade. In 1983, she edits an issue of “Flue” magazine, published by the Franklin Furnance Archives, dedicated to experimental art produced in Latin America. Three years later, she moves to Austin with her husband, artist Bill Lundberg (1942).
Regina Vater’s works are part of important collections, such as those of MoMA (New York), Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), Sammlung Verbund Collection (Vienna), Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, USA), San Antonio Museum of Art (Texas, USA), ArtPace Foundation (San Antonio, USA), Latin America Collection of the University of Essex (England), Marvin and Ruth Sackner Visual Poetry Archives (Miami), Long Beach Museum of Art (Los Angeles), CAYC – Centro de Artes y Comunicación (Buenos Aires), Museu de Arte Moderna (Rio de Janeiro), Museu de Arte Moderna (São Paulo), Museu de Arte Contemporânea – USP (São Paulo) and Museu Nacional de Belas Artes (Rio de Janeiro).
