Versão HTML básica
153
TESTA A TESTA
I met Rubens, in college, in 1958. We sat at a double desk. He was not yet Rubens Gerchman, the painter, but
the apprentice of himself. His school notebooks, illustrated by pencil with several faces of our classmates,
witnessed the birth of a vocation. We shimmered the room where we were, blackboard, Carlos Rodrigues
Brandão, our dearest friend, sat right behind, and who beat with the Latin dictionary in our heads when the
whispered conversation increased in volume, hindering the teacher speech; as was if we were outside, althou-
gh our figures appear, within the drawn classroom.
Rubens worked seriously, with a green rubber always in the left hand correcting what seemed inappropriate.
He did not make cartoon, caricature: he sought for the faithful copy, without removing or putting. Hence, the
designer boy was never a dilettante. Without knowing, or perhaps sensing it, he attended two courses at the
same time: the college course and the course of himself, which had nothing of amateur, quite the contrary;
what he was outlining there was his future. This “professional” footprint impressed me. I did not know what I
know today, but felt the urgency emanating fromhim, the life that he put on those vignettes and the vibration
arising from it. They were his first drawings and were the last ones. He picked up the pencil for nothing: he
took it for real, just in case.
When I write about those times now gone, I vividly remember the absolute concentration that reached “age”
the drawing of the face so young hunched over his notebook and his anguished waiting for an appraiser
comment, and without contemplation, of what he was doing. The dedication and strength were, since early,
inherent to him.
After the first of many dives in this collection and as a result, we get an overview about our legacy. This ena-
bled us to develop a lovely Project for cataloging, stowage and restoration of the works and documents. This
project won the Edital Pro Artes Visuais of FUNARTE in the category Artist Collection, in 2011, consisting of the
first prize in that group. Considered an innovative project, it aimed to establish care parameters for collections
of other Brazilian artists. The collection preservation and memory of Rubens Gerchman becomes crucial for
the Brazilian arts memory.
And as a result of this first Project, we present the publication “O rei do mau gosto” and the artist’s official
website: www.rubensgerchman.org.br.
Rio de Janeiro, May 2013
Instituto Rubens Gerchman
Clara Gerchman, Curator