Invention, Breath and Elegance

I don't think safe to say the Brazilian culture has already produced some genius, but there is who proposes for Antônio Poteiro that title. It may be or not an exaggeration, depending on the exact sense in that we use the word. The right is that he, a ceramist and surprising painter, a small bearded volcano that instead of fire, expels creativity and talent, and the creator of his own language, something very frequent among us. In the decade of 60, the sculptor Willys de Castro said something very mentioned about another creator: " Volpi paints volpis ". He wanted to say: in his originality, only the painter could define his work, the producer for the product, and vice-versa. Two years ago , the unmistakable painting of Poteiro took me to a paraphrase: "Poteiro paints poteiros". So that's how we understand his paintings.

It is difficult even to apply him some label. Not being, of course, an erudite artist, Poteiro either is habitually what we call of ' primitive'. Besides the undesirable contamination with the lack of ideas , the term usually designates a uniform type of painting that bases on some formulas and tricks in the Brazilian case. They are streams , fields and bloomed mountains, little clouds that seem cotton paddings and dispersed figurines, everything very colored with sweetened tones, almost showing the Eden world . It is not that what is in Poteiro, with his vigorous colors, his incisive illustrations, his delirious occupation of the space and his ironic vision of the world, sometimes caustic, in an uninterrupted celebration in fable.

In lack of something better, we will call him spontaneous - although it is not also the ideal, because it may suggest the idea of (absolutely false) that his creation maybe sprouts , with the naturalness of a source. That doesn't exist in art, which is " cosa mentale ", as affirmed Leonardo da Vinci. Even among the lunatics, it is born of an act of the will and of a change of messages between the brain and the hand. It has observed another ' Brazilian primitive', José Antônio da Silva: " I paint with the hands and I use the brain "; it is absolutely a very intelligent sentence . In the last chat with Poteiro, one month ago, I could verify the perfect conscience he has that he is working with formal problems, more than with content. Also for him the true challenge is not the tale, that eventually he tells in pictures, but the way to tell her. What can remove him the sleep is if the red color is very clear or very dark, or if the yellow color is in the right place. In spite of his rough figuration - fruit of his rude hands of potter - he is a professional who, dominates in all levels, his occupation.

If on one side, it will result delicious, as always, the version poteiriana of the 500 of the History of Brazil - a brilliant idea that was suggested him by his son Américo and it cost him more than a year of uninterrupted work -, for other I insist that the true fascination is not in the told episode, in the subject (term that master Volpi used with peculiar disdain, opposing the painting), not even in the eventual poetic licenses with which Poteiro inlays his narratives. It is in the proposed pictorial phenomenon. What gives the artist (portuguese/mineiro/goiano ) is exactly what misses to the primitives' identification cards : the painting quality, serving a bubbling imagination. Besides unmistakable personal , each screen or ceramic is of a wealth and inexhaustible vitality.

It is certainly that the power which encourages him. (anything more sentence done than that, but here it is true and inevitable). At the same time in that he does with the hands and the head, his art fixes roots in a magma that includes his own unconscious, the collective unconscious and magic forces, for whom believes in them. Of the mud he makes Poteiro - as wrote Frederico de Morais, more than twenty years ago - " something alive ", " involved in the own origin of the world and of the things ". For thathis ceramic " seem something that is being born, it's being done, a rumor of deep rivers traveling the earth inside, life inside, the night inside, a closer world of the mineral and of the vegetal, and in which the human being reveals his ' cosmic terror ' the one that involves " him. A beautiful and suggestive reading that is also applied to the painting - and that remains operative even if nowadays the individual Poteiro doesn't seem subject to great dramas. But perhaps he is even an inspired one, in the religious sense of the word. A lot of times he dreams the pieces that later will execute - what also happened with other creator of the same nature, mineiro G.T.O., today a little forgotten.

For everything Poteiro is a great artist. It transcends the definitions of his personality and his such singular production. He enjoys an unbeatable and deserved prestige, he makes critic success and market. It's missing to speak of his enviable breath. It is common, as it is known, the great artists to have a collusion with the gods, which grant them creative energy until the advanced age. The most famous and illustrious example is of Verdi, composing Otello to the 74, and Falstaff to the 80 years old; they are two master pieces. The long white beard of Poteiro perhaps make him seem older than he is, but in any way he already is exactly in the half of the 70. To see him face with elegance and competence an enterprise like that, with which honors such an important date for his two homelands, it belongs to all of us as supplemental bonus. And to notice that his quality didn't give up under the pressure of time is reason for pride for the art of the country that adopted him .

Olívio Tavares of Araújo