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who had lived in continued exile, was a draughtsman, a publicist who interpreted the trends of Art Deco and
Bauhaus’ geometric concerns. Mira Herschmann arrived at the port of Rio de Janeiro harassed by Nazi perse-
cution, with the conviction that Brazil would be the land of their children. He arrived eroded by this world of
persecutions. He had no passport, only one paper that identified him and arbitrarily changed his name from
Gerchman to Herschmann. Thus, only with his identity franchised, speaking French, Russian and German and
with a briefcase, he integrated soon in a society in expansion, which allowed him to work on his own art a day
after his arrival. Rubens’ mother, Sara is a Brazilian daughter of Russians from Odessa, who always found in
embroidery and tapestry a way to build her world – which she sees, hopelessly as a harmonic set of patches.
Rubens Gerchman was the firstborn son of a Jewish family that made him follow the images of his culture.
Reuben is the first of the twelve sons of the patriarch Jacob, those twelve who were also the tribes of Israel. Ac-
cording to the Bible:
Reuben, you are my firstborn, my fortress and the beginning of my strength: first in dignity,
first in power
. Thereby, from the beginning, and by various circumstances that were appearing in his personal
history, he will start by an enriching duality which will mark his life.
He is an upstanding Brazilian, heir of European traditions, a Jewwho was educated along with Brazilian gene-
ralized version of Christianity. He is a man who has many names, from Ruben to Rubens and has inherited the
arbitrary misconception of Herschmann. This entire complex microcosm personal, gathers arguments that
make us think: he is an artist who, from the beginning, could assume the versatility, got use to the multiplicity
and learn from childhood, to understand the distant gaze of the foreigner who observes social phenomena to
understand them and, thereby integrate in their homeland. No wonder that one of his greatest works of the
‘60s,
Carteira de Identidade
, said:
I am 1566166, therefore I am.
The family economic conditions were adverse. He grew up with his convictions, but at the same time pe-
remptory remembers phrases from his father, telling him: “In Europe I learned that there are two kinds of
art, applied art, which I do, and pure art, whose fate is the hunger.” When Gerchman dreamed to draw, his
father taught him to sketch on millimeter paper. Into that impossibility to integrate the ideals, opened up
a lonely path.
Portraits of a Memory
To be a son of immigrants generally is synonymous of middle class. He was born in San Sebastian clinic, grew
up in Ipanema, in the Street Rua Prudente de Moraes, 686, No 7, in a village house. At the corner of Monte-
negro with Prudente de Moraes was the Veloso bar where he went every day to buy ice cream and look, with
an irrepressible curiosity, to Bossa Nova music composers. Ipanema was his world. Fundação Getúlio Vargas,
College Nova Friburgo, was his school. There was a drawing teacher who stimulated his sensibility through
a method in which the notes depended on the amount of drawings that students made. Gerchman always
took the highest grade. He performed creative drawings of landscapes, of forests and animals which copied
from
Fauves
’ books.
His high school friends were and remain sensitive to the letters, from that period: Armando Freitas Filho, Ca-
margo Mayer and Carlos Rodrigues Brandão always wanted to be poets. Sensibility that he also felt close and
that adjusted to the forms that had passed to him since childhood.
The first art book, given by Isaac, a brother of his father from France who came to live with them, was about
Van Gogh. Isaac was an inventor, an engineer who captivated Rubens in repair radios and the creation of