sperbg
Visual Artist – Brazil
SPERB, Gisele
Gisele Sperb is a Brazilian visual artist whose work investigates portraiture as a site of affect, memory, and subjective transformation. Born in Encruzilhada do Sul, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Sperb completed her artistic training at the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), where she lived for three decades. She currently lives and works in Porto Alegre, developing her practice in her home studio while pursuing postgraduate studies in Psychoanalytic Theory.
Working across painting, installation, photography, and sensory-based propositions, Sperb has focused primarily on portraits and self-portraits since the pandemic period. Drawing on references from Fauvism and German Expressionism, her paintings are characterised by expressive brushwork and an intense, non-naturalistic use of colour. While her figures may initially suggest a naïve aesthetic, they evoke intimate and psychic questions, inviting the viewer into a space of reflection.
The images present in her work originate from a heterogeneous archive — books, magazines, photographs donated by friends, and materials from her personal collection. These sources are treated as working documents. Through gesture and colour, the figures are displaced from their original contexts, suggesting fissures in which memory, desire, and imagination intertwine.
Colour plays a central role in this process, oscillating between a reduced palette that explores black and white and, at other moments, erupting into colour, particularly the complementary tones of orange and blue. This fluctuation suggests a conception of subjectivity in constant becoming — an approach that subtly resonates with psychoanalytic concerns.
For Sperb, the creative process itself is epiphanic. In her text Epiphany in the Creative Process – When Time Is Other, the artist describes the canvas as both mirror and portal: a surface that reflects lived experience while simultaneously opening onto the unknown. The finished work, in turn, offers the viewer a similar possibility — an invitation to contemplation and the production of meaning.
Her work remains open, allowing for multiple readings and subjective crossings. Gisele Sperb has taken part in numerous group and solo exhibitions in public and private institutions. Among her key artistic references are Paul Cézanne, André Derain, Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Iberê Camargo.
Bibliographic reference
SPERB, Gisele Teixeira. The epiphany in the creative process – when time is different. Porto Alegre: Casaletras, 2020.
Exhibitions & Publications
Whoever I May Be?, 2025
Cover image of the book: Whoever I May Be a Girl? — Gender Issues in Childhood.
NELSON, Richardson Henrique. São Paulo: Blucher, 2025.
Imaginary and Memory in Gisele Sperb’s Self-Portraits
GUEDES, Geza; BORGES, Alexandre, 2024.
Published in Revista del CESLA.
https://www.revistadelcesla.com/index.php/revistadelcesla/article/view/865
The Third Bank, 2023
Cover image of the book: Psychoanalytic Interpretation: Revisiting Klein and Winnicott.
VIEIRA, Filipe Pereira. São Paulo: Blucher, 2025.
Ciclo Amanhecer, 6 July – October 2024
Espaço Attento, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Curated by Laura Lotti
Ciclo Véspera, 27 January – 6 April 2024
Espaço Attento, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Curated by Laura Lotti
Portrait of Lacan, 2022, and Portrait of Freud (No. 9), 2022
Exhibited at Lacan at IPA XVI – The Psychoanalyst in the Face of “Isms” and the Exclusion of the Other.
Brazilian Society of Psychoanalysis of Porto Alegre, Porto Alegre, 2023.
Portrait of Winnicott, 2022
Cover image of the book:
ALMEIDA, Alexandre Patrício de. For an Ethics of Care: Winnicott for Educators and Psychoanalysts, vol. 2. São Paulo: Blucher, 2023.
Portrait of Ferenczi, 2023
Cover image of the book:
ALMEIDA, Alexandre Patrício de. For an Ethics of Care: Ferenczi for Educators and Psychoanalysts, vol. 1. São Paulo: Blucher, 2023.
The Dream Seller, 2021
Cover image of the digital newspaper Jornal da Brasileira, vol. 25, no. 2, December 2022.
“What I Did When There Was Nothing I Could Do”
Publication of the Brazilian Society of Psychoanalysis of Porto Alegre.
https://www.sbpdepa.org.br/_files/ugd/8e576e_eaee14f877dc4ad985fae11fd2536c88.pdf
The Other Imbued with Us – Portraits, 2022
Casa Morada, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Curated by Evelise Bastos de Braga, Liza Sanvito Andreazza Corso and Rodrigo Antunes
https://www.bienalmercosul.art.br/portasparaaarte
Cantoria de Santinho
Cover image of the book: Symbolic Education, vol. 1: The Imaginary in the Cantoria of Santinho in Povo Novo (RS).
BORGES, Alexandre da Silva. Mundo Acadêmico, 2022.
ISBN: 978-65-89475-32-3
Souls of the Streets, 2022
CASA284, Encruzilhada do Sul, Brazil
Curated by Camila Quinteros and Gisele Sperb
Epiphany in the Creative Process – When Time Becomes Other
SPERB, Gisele Teixeira.
Porto Alegre: Casaletras, 2020.
Portas Abertas – Contemporary Art Exhibition, 2018
Social Sciences Library, Federal University of Pelotas, Pelotas, Brazil
Curated by the exhibiting artists
Processes, 2018
Chico Madrid Art Space, Sigmund Freud Scientific Society, Pelotas, Brazil
Curated by Eduardo Soares Devens
Antonyms and the White That Embraces Them, 2018
Centre for the Arts, Pelotas, Brazil
Curated by Duda Gonçalves
The Black Cat – Edgar Allan Poe, 2018
Café da Cátia, Pelotas, Brazil
Curated by Handre Barbachan
Common Vertex, 2018
Anglo Campus, Pelotas, Brazil
Curated by Kelly Wendt
Art Exhibitions in the VGRI 3D Virtual Environment
Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), 2017–2018
Curated by Juliana Angelli
1st Creative Processes Exhibition, 2015
Federal University of Pelotas Bookshop, Pelotas, Brazil
Curated by Renata Job
https://ccs2.ufpel.edu.br/wp/2015/12/08/1a-mostra-de-processos-criativos-na-livraria-da-ufpel/
Creative Processes Exhibition: Epiphany, 2015