Page 101 - ARTE!Brasileiros #45

think about the direction of art in a new government which support basis has caused the exhibition also emphasizes the three elements of candomblé with which he related most:
two most unfavorable episodes to the maintenance of artistic freedom in recent years: the the arrow of Oxóssi, the ax of Xangô and the stems of Ossain (or Ossanha). “These forms
boycott of the Queermuseum exhibition and the defamation of the artist Wagner Schwartz of candomblé are a starting point, but what it does is debug, synthesize, recreate, and
for performing La Bête. transfigure these forms into other elements. And therein lies the power of your work. Like
In addition to the elected president worrisome statements about art and culture, these every great artist, he creates his own universe, something unique and original”, says Oliva.
events cause great apprehension in the art environment. After all, he always points out that The exhibition at the Masp is part of the cycle “Afro-Atlantic Stories”, curatorial axis of the
artists take advantage of the incentives given by the government and that said, about the museum in 2018, consisting of individual exhibitions of artists whose works are crossed by
fire in the National Museum: “It’s done, it’s already set on fire. What do you want me to do?” racial issues and a large collective exhibition that synthesized the theme. With a focus on
Thus, the contempt of some in relation to what the election of this candidate represents could the black diaspora and “flows and ebbs” between Africa, Americas and Europe, highlighting
obey to some repressive principles of his plan of government in relation to culture and art. the violence and resistance that marked these stories, the museum followed the cycles
Renata still writes in the manifesto: “In opposition to this cynical indifference, we, the artists of “Stories of Madness and Feminist Stories” (2015), “Stories of Madness and Feminist
that are present here, created a show that had the solidarity of Casa do Povo, a democratic Stories” of Childhood “(2016) and” Stories of Sexuality “(2017). The curatorial axis in 2019,
space that understands art as a critical tool within a process of social transformation “ also focused on non-traditional narratives, is titled “Feminist Stories, Stories of Women.”
At Caixa Cultural, the exhibition with about 60 paintings and a sculpture also focuses on the
COVER RUBEM VALENTIM | PAGES 60 TO 64 symbolic universe and the issue of blackness in Valentim’s work. Focusing on the period in
THE AFRO-BRAZILIAN which the artist lived in Brasilia and in the final years of his life, between the federal capital
and São Paulo, the exhibition presents what Lontra considers “a hybrid, disturbing work
AND UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE that operates in the territory of fantasy and formation of national identity “. “He broke
OF RUBEM VALENTIM the traditional designations; despised anachronistic frontiers between the popular and the
scholar, between the national and the international, between reason and emotion”, writes
the curator in the presentation text of the exhibition.
EXHIBITIONS AT MASP AND CAIXA CULTURAL RETAKE THE POLITICAL
CHARACTER AND SYMBOLIC UNIVERSE OF THE BAHIAN ARTIST ENGAGEMENT AND ACTUALITY
Valentim was born in Salvador in 1911 and grew up in intimate contact with a syncretic
BY MARCOS GRINSPUM FERRAZ universe. Despite being of a Catholic family and having made his first communion, he
went with his father to the candomblé terreiro of the city. With a degree in dentistry,
IN HIS “MANIFESTO AINDA QUE TARDIO”, published in 1976, the Bahian painter, sculptor and engraver he began to dedicate himself to artistic production more fervently in the second half
Rubem Valentim (1922-1991) made it very clear from where his art emerged: “My plastic- of the 1940s, when he approached left-wing thinking and artists such as Mário Cravo
visual-signographic language is linked to deep mythical values of an Afro-Brazilian culture Jr., Carlos Bastos and Raymundo de Oliveira. Together they initiated a movement of
(mestiça-animista-fetichista). With the weight of Bahia on me - the culture experienced; renovation in the plastic arts in Bahia. Valentim still attended journalism in the early
with black blood in the veins - atavism; with their eyes open to what is done in the world - 1950s, in search of a more humanistic formation, and from the middle of this decade
contemporary “. He sought, as he said in the same text, “a universal language, but of a Brazilian began to incorporate in his paintings the emblems and signs of candomblé and umbanda.
character,” without joining any of the foreign or national movements or artistic currents. With the use of strong colors and geometric shapes, he created a personal repertoire
Still, contrary to the artist’s own words, much of the criticism, the market and the “based on a complex dynamics of cuts, subtractions and juxtapositions”, as Oliva explains.
historiography of art defined Valentim as a basically constructive artist, relegating Geometry and formal preoccupations, however, did not overlap with symbolic questions,
to the background the symbolic universe of his work, linked to candomblé, umbanda as the artist himself pointed out: “I was never concrete. I became aware of concretism
and to Afro-Brazilian culture. There was an “insistence on framing it, somewhat by through personal friendships with some of its members. (the mystical impregnation, the

force, in the context of canonical constructive currents, forged in the Rio-São Paulo awareness of the cultural values of my people, the Brazilian feeling)”. In this sense, both
axis, removing from the reflections the religious, spiritual and social, and therefore the movement of framing it in constructive currents and that of calling its work magical
political meanings that are an integral part of the conformation of his works and his and supernatural ended up taking from Valentim its political character, resumed now in an
life as an artist”, says Fernando Oliva, curator of the exhibition” Rubem Valentim: attentive way in the two paulistanas shows.In the Masp, the discussion also gains depth in
Afro-Atlantic Constructions”, a large solo artist’s poster at Masp until March 2019. a a large catalog that, besides presenting the exhibition, brings together historical texts,
Marcus Lontra, curator of “Rubem Valentim: Construction an Faith”, another exhibition by drawings and notes of the artist’s notebooks and unpublished essays by Lilia Schwarcz,
the Bahian artist in São Paulo, at Caixa Cultural, is on the same line. “So he became more Helio Menezes, Lisette Lagnado and Marta Mestre, among others.
palatable. They wanted to sweeten Rubem Valentim saying that he was a modernist with As the curators explain, Valentim was an artist engaged not only in the content of his visual
Brazilian temperinho. As if to say: ‘Let’s throw a palm here in this escargot’. But it turns work, but also in the political positions he assumed in texts and interviews throughout his
out that the palm was not the end, it was the base”, says Lontra. “That is to say, Valentine life. In his manifesto, for example, written in the midst of a military dictatorship, Valentim
starts from this African visuality and, with an erudite look, synthesizes it through color and stands as a defender of interchange between all peoples and nations, but against cultural
form”. On the other hand, when it was not classified as constructive or concretist, Valentim colonialism and subservience to standards from outside; defends a Brazilian visual poetics
was seen as a “mystical, supernatural and magical” artist, being framed in a folkloric that drinks in Afro-Amerindian-Northeastern iconography, but that flee from fads and the
universe also simplifying his work. “It is wrong and very limiting of the power of this artist “caricature violent of folklore and the genuine”; and states, finally, that “art is a poetic
to reduce it to only constructive or just tributary of the culture of candomblé”, says Oliva. weapon to fight against violence as an exercise of freedom against repressive forces.”
“We want to present the total artist he was, who transited and synthesized between forms “Unlike the purist discourse of modernism, Valentim represents the real possibility of
associated with geometric abstractionism of European, canonical lineage, and the forms constructing a language that reflects Brazilian specificities”, says Lontra. And it is these
he found originally in African-born religions”, he explains. specificities, for the healer, that must be identified and highlighted, especially in the
The proposal to present a more complex reading of Valentim’s work, highlighting its hybrid present context. At the moment when Brazil elects a president who offends quilombolas
character and its political force, is what moves the two shows on display in São Paulo. In and despises human rights, in which the country experiences assassinations like that of the
Masp, 80 paintings and 12 sculptures pervade mainly the periods in which the artist resided black and feminist councilwoman Marielle Franco and the capoeira master Moa do Katendê,
in Rio de Janeiro (1957-1963), London and Rome (1963-1966) and Brasília (1967-1981). The to resume the work of Valentim and its character politician gains new power and meaning.

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