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He was already, at that time, a fantastic person. I never missed any edition of
Revista da Civilização Brasileira
(magazine). I remember that he did a subject with me and Antonio Dias. There was a dialogue, something
even harsh, but I paid upper attentiveness to what he said because it was highly relevant. There is also a
curious fact. I redid four works of Gullar from drawings of Hélio Oiticica. The Gullar’s wife had thrown them to
the building trash, did not want to keep the poems. I redid a poem that was a blue cube. When you lift up this
poem the word “
lembra
” appeared. I retraced another one with a drawer which was two white plates with the
word “pássaro”. When you opened it, wings appeared. Hélio Oiticica knew very well these poems that were
destroyed and he guided me in their reconstruction. We included all of them in the
Nova Objetividade
[the
major collective exhibition, held in Rio, in the 1960s]. It was the first time that our generation has included in
an exhibition some works of the previous generation. Thus the concretists Ferreira Gullar and Aluísio Carvão,
with its
Cubo-Cor
, participated in the
Nova Objetividade
.
Then Gullar went through a big change. He dropped the idea of Concretism and involved in the ideological
query, politician, and produced an engaged work, focused on the issue of class struggle.
As students we were exceptionally close to this and everything that happened around us touched greatly with
us. We took part against the dictatorship as artists and, in a way, within all political events of that time.
You will apply also the word as a political struggle. For example in your work
Lute
.
The Lute is the Cartilha no Superlativo
. I made it to block the Rio Branco Avenue. Of course I would not block
anything, but it had 8 meters long and 2,40meters high. It was the maximum size that I could build you imagi-
ne what was like making a work of this size at that time, besides the futility of it? It stayed many years in front
of the Cinemateca, until the day that caught fire there.
The Lute
was in front of a wall and the fire printed that
word on it. Walter Carvalho was the only one who could enter and filmed the printed word on the wall.
The
Lute
was restored and is in the Museu de Arte Moderna of Rio de Janeiro until today. Created a life of its own
and gained a meaning that had not.
In a
Salon of Arts
, if I am not mistaken in Belo Horizonte, the jury, which you belonged, was considered
subversive by the military justice.
It was in 1976, in the
IV Salão Global de Inverno
performed at the Palácio das Artes in Belo Horizonte. The same
salon, subsequently, was transferred to Ouro Preto and was part of the activities of the
Festival de Inverno
.
I was director of the Escola de Artes Visuais of Parque Lage and was invited to be one of the jury members,
along with Frederico Moraes, Carybé and Mário Cravo, the sculptor. We decided to reward the work
Pendor da
Igualdade
, of authorship of a young artist named Lincoln Volpini. The work was considered subversive by the
military dictatorship and was seized on the opening day by the federal police. The award-winning artist and
all members of the jury were reported and incurred in the National Security Law. We were subject to arrest.
We suffered a military process that lasted over a year and, finally, we were acquitted. During the trial I took
the opportunity to make several sketches that resulted in a large panel with wooden reliefs, which I gave the
title
O Julgamento
. There is an ironic aspect, that is, the work ended up to represent the military justice judged
by the artist.