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ENTREVISTA COM RUBENS GERCHMAN
1
Fábio Magalhães
You project yourself as an artist in the ‘60s and become one of the major innovators of plastic language in
Brazil, along with Antonio Dias, Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, although these last two are from a generation
before yours. It is a decade of significant changes, a time of utter development in the visual arts, cinema, and
in the theater. You are one of the central figures of that period. Using as an example one work done it by you
in the ‘60s, your
Carteira de Identidade
, called
Sou 1 566 166 Logo Existo
, tell us a bit about this new cultural
identity that formed at that time.
Actually was created an ambiguity in my life. I have two names, that is, I do not have an identity but a double
identity – expression that became the title of a work I did 25 years later about passports, giving continuity to
the
Carteira de Identidade
. I have always been intrigued by the fact that people need to have a number to be
identified. My family name is Gerchman, but my name on documents is Herschman. I am a son of immigrants
– my father, who called Mira, lived a long time in Berlin –, and his last name was translated when he entered
in Brazil and presented a piece of paper that was not exactly a passport, it was just an authorization to enter in
the country. A sort of
laissez-passer
, also known as Nansen passport, for those who had lost their nationality,
as was the case of my father. He arrived to Brazil on a cargo ship on a Friday and in the following Monday, he
began working for the newspaper
O Globo
. I grew up visiting the advertising agency that my father formed
and watched how the graphics worked, observing the designers. My father used to take me on a cliches’ ma-
nufacture, the one in which he trusted, to see the templates. Dad was already performed ads and logos in Ber-
lin, until he could work no longer and brought all the technology from there to Brazil. He was, already at the
time, a qualified and modern person – Berlin was one of the liveliest and most captivating cities in the world.
He forcedme to draw letters and only then he left me play football. Inmy family, many people were connected
to typography, I also had a grandfather who was calligrapher. I started working early in lithography. When I
was admitted in the Escola de Belas Artes, I became interested in working on the stones and also brought to
the plastic arts a little of this world of black and white, which was the advertising at the time.
The first paintings I did were in black and white, because so were the newspapers. I knew that if I did some-
thing good in black and white, when it was reduced to be published would be keen. I watched the technique
that people used: it was a black foundation and you opened the white lights in the gypsum. Then I went to
make engraving, I used this method, dig out the wood and open the lights.
This world of black and white was the beginning. In 1966, I made an album with Carlos Scliar, titled
Félix Pa-
checo 1566 166
, with five serigraphs, in which joined this work of the identity. Another excellent artist, painter
and printer, Dionisio del Santo allowed each of us to use his studio for a month.
Sou 1 566 166 logo existo
. The
title was the number of my identity card, due to the hardships I went through when I served in the Army at
Copacabana Fort, at the time of resignation of Jânio Quadros. There, all had numbers. Some of them stayed in
my memory, like Captain Dickens, who asked me to draw the defense plants of the fort. I finished my military
service as marksman corporal. The Corporal 202! I looked at my identity card and thought that if I had not a
number no one would recognize me.
1
In: MAGALHÃES, Fábio.
Rubens Gerchman
. São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional: Lazuli Publisher, 2006. (N.O.).