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That is the “artist’s portrait as a young man” performed by himself that I bring to the paper surface. He still
did not have the status of the self-portraits that he would convene later compose. Since then, there has been
no exact change, but an extension: from the microcosm of a classroom for the whole city that he drawn and
painted with the hand free of practice, to reach, with the constant commitment, to the full expression, am-
plified, militant and alert.
Because of this violent mixing of vocation and rare talent, the degree of commitment is high, as well as of this
high “fever” and sleepless faith, Rubens Gerchman was the greatest painter of his generation: his paintings
are famous because they accompany our existence on its intimate and public truly essence; of the love skir-
mishes in the back seat of cars parked on the seashore, to the mismatches of everyone on burst buses, in the
trampling on the sidewalks where they crumple, crumpled, lost and lonesome in the conflict crowd.
By a happy coincidence I write this presentation to the book that Funarte will publish with his work, such
as, in 1978, I wrote the poem “Cidade Maravilhosa”, which opened the booklet, that Funarte published with
pioneering caught anthology of his drawings, paintings and interventions. The small “tables” that we have
always done for 50 years of friendship, which have not lost the thread, of texts to his exhibitions and covers for
my books and two more books of joint authorship,
Mademoiselle Furta-Cor
and
Dupla Identidade
, maintained
their principle actively live. The poem quoted, reproduced, not closing a circle of collaborations, but opening
here, again, to fix the memory of other readers what I better have done to catch, almost at the same time,
what he said and did to me, “painting the seven”:
WONDERFUL CITY
The city opens like a newspaper:
flash flan flagrant
in the leaf that the wind blows
in the imprinted scream that flies
in the voice
with the headline
FIGHT IN THE AIR
In the air
or in the diminutive space
that remains for us
on the ground
of the houses to live
in the overcrowded buses
in the stuffed stadiums
the man who