ROHMIR REPORTS
PLEASE IGNORE THE RULES
In conversation with painter and collector Olivier Mourao
By Dr Olga ROH
There are artists who prefer to remain hidden behind the work. They release a painting into the world, offer a smile of deliberate ambiguity, and leave the rest to critics, curators and dinner-party speculation.
Then there are rarer cases. Olivier Mourao is not only speaking with us, but allowing us into the place where the work itself begins — his rather unusual London headquarters: part home, part studio, part private universe, assembled according to the sort of logic only artists and perhaps aristocrats entirely trust.
Mourao’s work has appeared in seventy-four exhibitions and over seven hundred publications. In London, his work has been shown at the Saatchi Gallery during StART 2021 among other exhibitions, though trying to place him comfortably inside one movement feels faintly optimistic. His work moves between Abstract Expressionism, Expressionism, Impressionism and Pop Art with complete indifference to labels, treating artistic categories as optional reading material. Paint, collage, handmade paper, textures and fragments all find their way into his compositions.
So this is not merely an interview with a painter. It is a visit to the source itself — an invitation into the domestic and creative orbit of a singular artistic imagination.
O.R.: Through art, you almost understand people like a psychologist.
Olivier: Well, I am a very good psychologist. I study people — but from an artist’s point of view. And I truly like everybody. Not everyone stays in your heart, of course. Many people shine briefly. Very few remain. But I love people. That is what inspires me most: characters. I take that energy. Not everything comes to my heart. But I take it in and transform it into something positive. I need that for life. It explains my paintings.
O.R.: Your energy seems to have escaped the paintings entirely and spread itself around the house. I am beginning to suspect the walls have joined in. If this house had to introduce its owner, what would it say?
Olivier: Glad you feel it. A home without soul is not a home. What would my house say? Well… this was the London pied-à-terre of William Morris.
There are moments in life where the brain requires a few seconds to reorganise itself. This was one of them.
O.R.: William Morris? THE William Morris? Founder of Morris & Co., father of the Arts and Crafts movement, designer, artist — one of the great names of nineteenth-century Britain. Speechless. No — worse than speechless. Genuinely surprised.
Olivier: I bet you are! He had a house in the countryside, and this was his London address. When he came into town, he stayed here.
He points towards the windows.
Olivier: Even the glass designs are his. This period still lives everywhere. You see it in the Victoria and Albert Museum, of course. So much comes from that world.
O.R.: So your house has done the introductions for you already — and I must say, quite impressively.
Olivier: Maybe! I live six months here and six months in Spain. But London… London is a privilege.
People come here to see Olivier Mourao’s own works and also his collection of great masters — names that most people encounter in museums rather than in somebody’s living room. But collections are curious things. After a while, one starts wondering whether walls reveal artworks… or owners.
O.R.: What is difficult to understand at first sight when someone meets you for the first time?
Olivier: A lot of people come here for my art. And then I have to introduce myself as an artist. Then they discover I am a very happy and full-of-energy human being. I love entertaining. I like people feeling happy. And then I am an art collector, of course.
He gestures toward a painting.
Olivier: Look at this Monet here on the wall. Around 1900. He painted his family house in France many times — same place, different light, different moments. I love that. He keeps returning to the same thing and somehow it never becomes the same! And that is why these works stay with us. They remain alive long after their creators are gone.
And then Andy Warhol — I am a huge admirer of Andy Warhol. I always loved Warhol — especially the sixties, when everything exploded.
O.R.: The beginning of Pop Art madness…
Olivier: Exactly. The famous Cow. He took something completely ordinary and turned it into wallpaper. Suddenly the walls became the artwork.
O.R.: Very Andy — making the ordinary gloriously strange.
Olivier: Later there were objects and editions too, but I thought: why keep everything? Better to keep the work itself. I only put these pieces together a few days ago and finally they are presented exactly as I wanted.
O.R.: Oh yes, definitely. And you also have the famous revolver work?
Olivier: Yes. And over there — a Studio 54 drawing. Iconic.
Now look at the mask at this wall. I preserved this Egyptian mask — around 1300 BC.
O.R.: Is it not scary to live with a death mask looking at you?
Olivier: No, because you do not identify it with anybody anymore. Quite the opposite. I think of eternity. Everything created with love becomes art — even a mask. Egypt remains one of those civilisations we can still hold in our imagination. You can still travel there in your mind.
I also have a head in the other room. Around 3000 BC.
O.R.: That rather catches the eye.
Olivier: Exactly. It caught mine immediately because you can tell when something is authentic. Today it is difficult to acquire pieces like this, so having such an artefact in a private collection is rare.
O.R.: What is the most “you” object in this house? Your favourite piece?
Olivier: People come here and everyone chooses something different. It becomes like an art party. People gather and suddenly discover different favourites. But perhaps the most me piece is that portrait there. It welcomes my guests before I do.
O.R.: I will not lie — you look wonderfully glamorous there. And that frame certainly understands theatre.
Olivier: My home is never finished. I always want to move things, change things, find a better place for something. Art changes, life changes, and the house changes with it. Everything is organic. The idea of an artist is pleasing the eye. This is what we are all searching for.
Now a surprise: Olivier asked his assistant to bring different paintings down one by one — almost like a moving exhibition. Not a museum feeling. Better. A room changes the moment a new painting enters.
Olivier: Art is my whole life. An entire life. We all want, somehow, to remain. And then one day you realise there is also the great unknown.
O.R.: How would you like to be remembered? Not with a mask, I hope.
Olivier: Haha. Certainly not with an Egyptian death mask. But you know… I think people remain through moments. Through energy. Through what they leave in other people.
Olivier: In my life I had one of those moments myself: I met Picasso when he was alive. And that remains one of the most extraordinary souvenirs of my life.
I was seventeen, doing photography in Paris. People my age wanted to see the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, things like that. For me — no. For me Picasso was the great master. So I found out where he was staying and booked myself into the same hotel. In the morning I waited downstairs. When he came out I ran to him and said: Master, Master, may I carry your suitcase? It’s not for money, it’s for pleasure!
He gave it to me. Then he touched my head. Two words were enough. You suddenly realise: you are standing next to genius. My French was not very fluent then, but luckily I spoke Spanish, so we spoke together in Spanish.
And later I also met Dalí. I met Gala in New York with him. Gala was extraordinary. She directed everything. Completely everything. She was his soul. She was his master in many ways.
Dalí himself had this wonderfully ironic spirit. He made fun of everything. He understood theatre, attention, spectacle — and marketing too. He knew exactly how to play with fascination.
But Gala was different. Her guidance was priceless. Without her I do not think it would have been the same Dalí. She brought direction. Energy. She gave him something essential. Sometimes in life you meet one person and immediately understand: this is the one. This person changes the whole story. For Dalí, I think Gala was exactly that.
O.R.: Have you ever met someone who guided you? Did you have your own Gala? Or have you always been your own direction?
Olivier: I must admit, I have always had a very strong sense of direction. I am rather my own compass, which is very useful. But of course we all need friends and people who support us. More importantly, you have to remain open to people who open doors.
I remember my first exhibition. I was sixteen and met people from a circus. They had elephants, animals, everything. So naturally I asked: Can I borrow an elephant? Because I wanted to enter the gallery with an elephant. People loved this.
O.R.: That is either brilliant marketing or early symptoms of extravagance.
Olivier: Why choose? I was already quite a spirit then. I started painting very young — around eight years old — and became a sort of child prodigy. Sadly I do not have many photographs from that time. People did not document every second of life then. Childhood happened and disappeared. It belonged to memory.
O.R.: What actually pushed you towards art? Was there ever another option? Did you discover art — or did art discover you?
Olivier: I never really decided. It was already there. In school I was making noises, drawing everywhere, constantly somewhere else in my mind. My mother would ask: What exactly are you doing?
And I would close my eyes and paint. That was my way.
Even now sometimes I take a tube of paint, turn it upside down and work almost blindly. Something inside takes over. It is expression. It comes from somewhere deeper.
And handmade paper fascinates me too. It is almost like painting with paper itself.
Let me show you one piece from my collection which means a world to me: Picasso. It comes from the Blue Period. He made many studies around this time and this is one of them. You can still feel the influence of El Greco there — elongated forms, long hands, long proportions, almost spiritual silhouettes.
Actually, I fell in love with Spanish art very early. And once I discovered it, that was it. Completely finished. I was lost.
I especially love drawings because they give you a little entrance into the artist’s mind. A drawing tells you things a finished painting sometimes keeps secret. And I love works with stories attached to them.
There is a little Picasso drawing I own connected to one of his birthdays. He had organised a dinner, invited friends, designed things around it, and paid for the evening with this little drawing for Patrick, the restaurant owner. I love these stories. Paintings travel through lives before they arrive in yours.
And with my own work it is very similar. There are always little stories. Big stories. Accidents. Encounters. I simply give work to my imagination. Paintings become mirrors of what I see.
And I love large pictures because they do something very practical: they make a room bigger. They open the space. Suddenly everything feels bigger. Much cleaner. Which is a wonderful trick.
O.R.: You also have Warhol’s famous Cow. He created it in 1966 as a screenprint and wallpaper installation.
Olivier: The famous version covered entire walls with repeated cow heads in violent pink and yellow. Completely impossible to ignore. He took something utterly ordinary — a peaceful cow in a field — and turned it into something artificial, fluorescent and slightly absurd. Very Warhol.
O.R.: Warhol turned cows into something gloriously vulgar.
Olivier: Definitely. That was his genius. He could take things nobody would look at twice and suddenly force everybody to stare.
Now right beside it — a completely different personality: Juan Gris — a wonderful Spanish artist and a friend of Picasso. Or perhaps friendship with a little competition attached. They were both in Paris, both part of that extraordinary Cubist moment. Picasso was like weather. He arrived somewhere and suddenly everybody else was standing in Picasso season. Gris was different. More structured. More measured. Very elegant in his thinking. He loved collage too and became hugely important for Synthetic Cubism.
O.R.: So admiration and rivalry sitting at the same table?
Olivier: Exactly. Artists are not saints.
O.R.: Monet! This makes my heart beating higher… a pioneer from an earlier revolution.
Olivier: Yes, Monet changed the game completely. Suddenly people were after light itself. Not bad for someone who loved light and gardens.
O.R.: Olivier, we have admired highlights from your collection, but I have to say — you yourself look rather like a piece from the collection. Your style is always completely your own. And this silk outfit… it feels as if it arrived with a story attached to it.
Olivier: I am glad you noticed. I love silk. Nothing feels better to me. And now with the sun — suddenly the fabric begins playing games. Light changes it, movement changes it, colour changes it.
Fashion is very much like art. You cannot disappear into it. You need a signature. Something recognisable. Something that belongs only to you.
Talent alone is never enough. Many people have talent. Style is rarer. Plenty of people can paint. Plenty of people can dress well. But when you can recognise somebody from the other side of the room — now we are speaking about style.
Olivier asked his assistant to bring more of his paintings. New works. Older works. Suddenly the room itself began changing. Not a museum where you walk around art — art was walking around us. Paintings arrived one after another like scenes in a film. Brazil. The Amazon. Heroes. Memories. Colours following colours.
Olivier: I started art in Brazil and for me everything began with light, colours and emotion. Very expressive. Brazil gives you that naturally.
O.R.: I have the strange feeling I am reading a beautiful book with illustrations. Literature and art seem to dance together anyway. Peggy Guggenheim once admitted: “I intended to be a writer, but somehow I became an art collector.”
Olivier: Haha. Well then let me take you into another story. My Gardener portrait tells one in its own way. He has just received flowers. Fresh colours.
You must understand — colours are medicine. Colours heal people. I love the idea of gates. Entrances into safe places. A home should have warmth, individuality, something that protects your soul a little. Colours create that. They connect people too.
Maybe this is why I still spend all my free time painting. Whenever guests leave and the house becomes quiet, I paint.
O.R.: You believe in colours almost like a religion. There is an idea that appears often in Indian stories — artists, poets, dancers, musicians are sometimes portrayed as people living slightly closer to another world. As if they receive things rather than simply invent them.
Olivier: I did not know that. But perhaps I understand it because I feel something similar. People speak about living many lives — eight, ten, who knows. But perhaps as an artist you live several lives inside one. You have this privilege of saying your own artist’s word.
O.R.: But who are these fortunate people honoured with becoming your models?
Olivier: It is difficult to explain. I see someone and something stays with me. Then suddenly an image arrives.
Picasso once said: “To draw, you must close your eyes and sing.” I understand that very well.
I work quickly. Very instinctively. I take the tube, almost without thinking, and suddenly something appears. Afterwards the colours begin adjusting themselves.
O.R.: Was there ever another possibility for you? Another life? Or was becoming an artist obvious from the beginning?
Olivier: Immediately. I knew it as long as I can remember.
O.R.: What was the family plan?
Olivier: Ah, my father had grander ambitions. He wanted me to become a diplomat or something with dignity, purpose… respectable things. Fun fact: My father was a playboy.
O.R.: Well, fancy that! That was not the answer I expected!
Olivier: Believe me — it is an excellent description. He was flamboyant, wealthy, terribly handsome. He adored life. Also rather talented at destroying himself. He drank far too much and died early, which is tragic. But he absolutely loved his version of life and he had tremendous fun living it.
And then there was me. I became his mission. And perhaps because of that I wanted to become something nobody could entirely control. A free spirit. A singing one.
O.R.: Do you actually sing while painting? And what music follows Olivier Mourão through the studio?
Olivier: Well, sometimes yes! Music always mattered enormously to me. I loved Bach from the time I was a little boy and I still do. Bach remains my great favourite. And Brazil gave us Villa-Lobos, of course. Bachianas Brasileiras… extraordinary. Some of the most beautiful music imaginable. And now with age I find myself suddenly moving towards Mahler. Especially the Ninth Symphony. It gives me thoughts. For my work. For myself.
O.R.: Interesting. That is quite a constellation — Bach, Villa-Lobos and Mahler. Especially Mahler. He had this almost monastic seriousness and was famously introspective.
Olivier: Ah, but that part is absolutely not me. I am a Brazilian! And with us things generally prefer arriving with the doors open. I feel things loudly. I express things loudly. Silence and I know each other, of course. But we simply do not spend very long together!
O.R.: And while studying in Brazil, which artists immediately come to mind?
Olivier: I have always loved Candido Portinari. For me, he is one of the great Brazilian masters. His work has such humanity and strength. But the school that formed me was named after Alberto da Veiga Guignard. By the time I arrived, Guignard had already passed away, of course, but his presence was still there. He painted churches, landscapes, houses — scenes of Brazil — and he became important enough that an entire art school carried his name. You still felt that atmosphere around you.
O.R.: So in a way, you studied not only in a school, but inside a legacy. How did you actually break out — from Brazil to Paris, London… and Spain?
Olivier: I left very young. Sixteen. I told my father I wanted to live in London. He said: You’re crazy. And perhaps I was.
But I told him: Daddy, look at Brazil. Brazil, as we know it, is young — traditionally dated to 1500, when Pedro Álvares Cabral arrived on the coast while sailing for Portugal. So: only five hundred years!
And then I looked at Europe. Europe already had centuries and centuries before that — entire civilisations, architecture, cities, artists… everything already standing there. And for me, as a boy, it felt magical. I wanted to belong to that world somehow. I wanted to grow inside it. I wanted museums, travel, and to learn from this part of the world.
O.R.: Let me guess — when you moved to different places, did your way of painting change over the years, or was changing your style impossible?
Olivier: Colours, yes. Constantly. Style, no. Style is the way I see things. That stays. Colours travel.
And people are funny — many spend years trying not to change at all. They keep this old-world feeling about them. I like that.
O.R.: Modern classics?
Olivier: Exactly. Once I painted a friend. I loved the attitude immediately. You cannot quite tell if he is sitting, floating or inventing a new position. I told him: Don’t do anything. Naturally, he immediately started doing something. He was simply playing. I like that energy. I like when paintings escape a little outside the frame.
O.R.: Looking around here — and even in your colours — Brazil never seems very far away. Do you still go back?
Olivier: Of course. It’s worth the travel! For the food alone. Brazil has a dangerous talent — it feeds both your soul and your waistline at the same time. The fruits — there is nothing to compare with them. Everything tastes of sunlight.
And my family is there. We are not a very big family, so I go back and keep things together. Maybe every five years.
But Brazil itself is a great mixture. Five hundred years ago the Portuguese brought enslaved people from Africa — from places like Nigeria. So the cultures, tastes, traditions started mixing, people arriving from everywhere and leaving things behind. Every dish tells this story. Things came from different worlds and somehow ended up in the same pot. You must try feijoada — it is almost a metaphor for Brazil itself. Many origins ending up in one pot. When we see each other next time, I promise to invite you to the real incredible one!
And with feijoada — Brazil in a dish — we took our leave. Soon he was off to Ibiza, his other paradise: perfect weather, perfect light, and that particular freedom every painter seems to spend a lifetime chasing. Señor Mourão left behind his colours, his stories, his contagious energy. And I hope that somewhere, between these pages, a few sequins of his beautiful world remain with you too.