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ENGLISH VERSION RE-NATION

Chico activates a particular exhibitions são paulo [pages 44 to 49] as dead trees, fallen trees or wooden
cosmology in which elements of life, THE MODERN HILLBILLY stumps. The presence of herds passing
everyday life, Amazonian and indigenous by, people moving around or working
imagination are protagonists. If today Painter José Antônio da Silva’s work offers indicates that nothing is stationary
his creation of worlds would be reading keys to an important turning there: everything moves and transforms
classified as “speculative fabulation”, point in the history of Brazil, in socio- all the time, including the vegetation,
environmental, artistic and formal terms
the artist in life was never associated which was recently altered and had
with an idea of the “future”, but was by theo monteiro its original configuration destroyed.
always fixed to an image of the past, Vultures are equally frequent in the
primitive and bestialized, and with a the object of the exhibition Duas artist’s paintings, as if they represented
difficult adaptation to the present, to poéticas, at Galeria Estação, in which death, which stalks everything and
the now, to the clumsy idea of modernity his production was placed in dialogue everyone.
that was being announced. with that of the contemporary painter Silva’s contribution, however, is not
Chico’s own mouth was also the Cristina Canale, José Antônio da Silva, restricted to a social portrait. In the
mouth of the reinvention of language, in which labels such as “primitive”, history of Brazilian art, his appearance
of the conception of new words, of and “naïve” , produced work of great and career took place precisely in
dialectical creations, which bewildered complexity and that can offer important the midst of a moment of profound
the interlocutor: his mouth with gold teeth reading keys for understanding a great transformation. “Discovered” by
gave his body the most complete modernity. turning point in the history of Brazil, critics in 1946, it witnesses a moment
Chico’s mouth was never that of the past both in socio-environmental terms, as when the Brazilian art system begins
nor that of the present, his mouth was well as in artistic and formal terms. to become institutionalized: the first
always in the future, and announced: even To better understand the work of museums of modern art appear in São
the roof of his mouth is golden. this unique painter, it is important to Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the Bienal
Another important movement in understand his origins in the caipira Internacional de São Paulo is created
Chico’s saga is the creation of the culture. Born in 1909, in Sales de Oliveira, and the development of a growing
Escola do Pirambu. The place brought northwest of São Paulo, he belonged market for modern art. Together
together collaborating artists with to a family of rural workers. With no with these transformations, trends in
whom Chico shared his technique, possessions, they lived moving from abstract art developed in the country,
whose reproduction soon contaminated farm to farm, offering their workforce to which ended up on a collision course
the idea of “genius” and “original”, landowners in the region. This was the with the figurative art in force until then,
fundamental to the art market. This reality of many redneck families of that with an expressionist bias and focus
dilution of authorship at the Escola period. As shown by Antonio Candido on social themes.
do Pirambu was not exempt from in Partners of Rio Bonito, a broad study Silva established interesting
punishment. In an article in Jornal do he carried out on the caipira culture, it dialogues with this aesthetic debate
Brasil, Chabloz himself accuses the was formed throughout the colonial prevailing in Brazilian art of that
fading of the artist’s poetic authenticity. period by wandering sertanistas period. At a time when the world
The headline announces: “Swiss decrees who settled in remote regions of the was experiencing a kind of post-war
the artistic death of Chico da Silva”. [1] backlands of São Paulo. Living in “hangover”, the socially engaged
Chico never artistically recovered small towns or ranches, they were theme gained a lot of ground in the
from this campaign produced by the based on subsistence agriculture and field of arts and culture, influenced by
European critic, who did not respect him hunting/gathering. With the expansion a certain expressionism, and which had
as a capable human being, treating him of latifundia throughout the 19th and important representatives in artists
as a primitive. Chabloz did not discover 20th centuries, they gradually lost their such as Portinari and Goeldi. . A great
Chico da Silva: it was the walls of Praia way of life and were subjugated to work defender of this type of aesthetic was
Formosa that germinated the visionary on these large properties. Thus, their the critic Lourival Gomes Machado,
artist, and it was his insight, his strength culture was progressively disappearing. who, not by chance, had a very close
and courage to overcome adversities Not only that. The landscape, previously relationship with Silva. Although in a
in life and in art, which configured him marked by the presence of forests, very singular way, the tone of social
as a discoverer of himself. cerrados and small-scale agriculture, denunciation appears with some
Af er the attack, Chico was constantly was giving way to monoculture and frequency in the work of the painter
hospitalized due to alcoholism, cattle herds. in question. Scenes of work, everyday
psychiatric problems and the The work of José Antônio da life and even moments of suffering and
consequences of an equally colonized Silva shows exactly this social and tragedy are recurrent in his paintings,
society that could not even respect him. landscape change in the interior of usually with great expressiveness.
Currently, his work is undergoing a new the state. Starting with his paintings The very destruction of nature by
commercially speculative process, but never portraying wild or untouched monoculture is criticized in these
Chico died poor in 1985, becoming nature. As much as the human figure works, anticipating the environmental
a character who deserves to be is sometimes absent, there is always debate by a few decades. As a way of
demystified and humanized. some indication of anthropic action: obtaining the necessary expressiveness
roads, plantations, livestock, etc. In and drama for his compositions, he
[1] Egídio Serpa, “Swiss decrees the artistic his monoculture landscapes (cotton resorts to models of sacred art,
death of Chico da Silva”, Newspapers in fields, cornfields, pastures) signs of possibly originating from a certain
Brazil , 24 out. 1980, notebook B, p. 1. devastation are represented, such popular Catholicism. Some positions
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