English

_{Roberto Da Silva 40 years with Art} 

CURRICULUM

“I am a painter. Sculptor, Graphic, Engraver and Theoretic Artist. At present I reside and practice as an artist in RECIFE, Brazil. My Artistic research is on Brazilian urban setting and in particular on the existing symbolism in this setting which effects contemporary man and interfere with his cultural behavior and manner of acting in the world. Observations have leaded me to the study of architectural barriers and of urbanization, not only in relation to the large urban mass, but also, in particular, to the paralytics and the BLIND.”

Roberto Da Silva

Rua Marques Amorim, 46 Boa Vista, Recife – 50070-330 Brazil    aimaginariapopular@gmail.com                  http://robertodasilva40anos.blogspot.com/

 Recife, a tropical city in Brazil

Narrative account of my carrier

My artistic carrier had began in 1971 with a group from Recife’s Fine Art School; of course my research was directed before for a new art language. I was from Pernambuco Federal Technical School, recently want out – I conclude my study of architecture drawing in 1969 – where, by famous artist Luis Notari I studied art. The possibility to know others artist had began how one of the founders of avant-garde group called MAP (Art and Research Movement). This movement This work I titled “Cosmic Experience” –  Pernambuco Contemporary Art Museum for my first individual in August 1973, by merit had me invited.

The first experience in the art world, throw me how a knotweed artist. The study by Pernambuco Federal Technical School learned was now insufficient, and I looked for news course by Philosophy Faculty – Art Theory and History – and by art and craft classical school – practice of art.

The State Museum, in 1975, classificated me in a collective exhibition, and by Georgia Fine Art School I received an special invited for exhibit by a Cultural Exchange Collective Program.

1975 was for me an important year: good repercussion in the Recife intellectual ambient, and indicated by Italian Consulate in Recife to study in Roma Architecture Faculty, Italy.

1977 – The Rome artistic world gave me a rapid adaptation. The Studio AM16 had for me – living by “Atelier” and moving on the artistic ambient – important contact, because there was an avant-garde international meeting. Graphic and Painter on paper that ambient help me in my development. I had direct contact with Bruno Munari, Julio Le Parc, Aldo Mengolini, Giustina Prestento, Grazia Chiesa, an artistic association, the group of Milan and Brescia, Italy. I was between the most important international artistic centers.

The Architecture Faculty gave me one other perspective. Prof. Bonito Oliva was my professor of Modernism Art History and the international transvangard creator. The Critic of Art History Prof. Carmine Benincasa gave for me a new world of the critic. Philosopher, Prof. Dr. Emilio Garroni – a great friend – Professor of Aesthetic by Rome Philosophy and Literature Faculty, Rome University, gave me an important contribution for my art thought. He wrote a critic for my project “From Drawing to Object” – Do Desenho ao Objeto – that I include in my catalogue exhibition I Rome, Mainz and Recife (1985/1986).

The Rome group invited me for an exhibition in Vienna. I was between the most important international artists by the Vienna Künstler Haus, in 1981.

West Germany gave me a great jump: exhibition by Brazilian Munich Consulate in 1983 and invited from Mayor Peter Stoger for Übersee Feldswies am Chiemsee (Bavaria) Kunst Haus exhibition by one of the 15th more important museum from Bavaria, West Germany. The important politic man Prof. Kurt Biedenkopf from Westfalen (West Germany) had the Patronage. The Critic Klaus Schönmetzler wrote a good critic by the “Chiemgau Zeitung”.

in Rome there was an archive of Brazilian artists to show to the critics and journalists.

The research had me possibility to find a system to the blind more art between the contemporary art language: Tactile Art, Abstract Art, Sign Art: Conceptual Art.

I had make in Rome and Mainz, a Pernambucan Culture and Art Meeting – September 85/January 86 – with a collective of pernambucain artists and an individual of my work.

The contact with painter Boss Wolfgang from Dresden (DDR) had began a relationship with East Germany, and after a changed of art theory letter, I received invite to participate with a conference by “Bauhaus Koloquium”, the oldest Gropius School, Weimar City.

1986, 12 march, arrived in Recife, Brazil, with a program of Northwest Culture decentralization and a donation to the Pernambuco Contemporary Art Museum of 35 work art on paper from artist of 9 different countries.

From Drawing to Object”

Catalogue (1985/86) of Roberto Da Silva, “Do Desenho ao Objeto”: Roma, Mainz e Recife.                                                                                                                                               In my analysis of present crisis of art, I am seeking a way to express Brazilian art via the environment in which I was born, the city. I am talking urban society for the subject because in this unique setting our most characteristic living takes place. In researching contemporary art, it may seen strange of Brazilian art, since the modern trend is toward an internationalization of art.                                                                                       

In the Theories which I propose I take as my starting point the culture of the environment itself. It is the social dynamism which characterizes my society; the urban fetish which inspires so much of our music, theatre, literature, cinema, and also figurative art. In the urban setting the politics of a nation are decided. Here also we see that encounter between man and space, his conflicts, his joys, that complex of images which make the urban e symbol of work. Urban man is as much influenced by images as the rural dweller. From this complex system I try to draw out as artistic communication. The city dweller from morning to night is bombarded by these images. What sings...? what symbols...? The interactionist theory of MEAD comes to my mind; his theory concerning the meaning of symbols. It is like a person who finds himself confronted with the tracks of a bear in the woods – Do Desenho ao Objeto                

For MEAD, the person is not frightened by bear tracks, but he is afraid of what they symbolize. Suppose we extend his theory and have a person stant at principal point in a city. What kind of a conceptual analysis can be made of those signs which one finds there? And if that person is accustomed to living amidst those signs?... Haw will he be haven? Those signs and that person are living realities for so many others. That compact, tight image, image, which is part of his daily reality, is also part of that whole society. What kind of reaction will it have on the unconscious? It is no longer a social datum, but a social reality which is part of the collective consciousness. That social group succeeds in putting this collective consciousness together with culture, with its conception of the world, that world which is their level.                                                  

That synthesis of politics, economics, religion, of those factors which make up a society all contribute to its progress. This urban symbology is part of his social reality, and man cannot be indifferent to it because it is part of his world and he identifies with it. I have had to develop a whole conceptual analysis of space in order to succeed in transforming that feeling of disinterested pleasure in graphics and painting, and now also in objects: those living material images which I still experience today through the medium of art, not only of a reality already experienced but real even now, unchangeable; who know?... perhaps in order to answer G.H. MEAD´s questions.

Art Project to the Blind in Murillo La Greca Museum – Recife 2008

 

Project “The Blind professionalization between the conceptual art methods”

Due to the post-war crises which accompanied visual art, placing in doubt the concept of the study of aesthetics, many artists where on their guard against being distanced from society. We have seen much valid research in the movement from Pop Art to Conceptual Art. Not only in confrontation with the crises in ideology but also due to the necessity of a new economic programmsation, art, which at one time was sensible to reality, now finds itself in constant contradiction.

As an artist conscious of the reality in which we live, I have directed my research (since 1980) to probing the social aspect of art and trying to evaluate it by analyzing urban man as the decisive protagonist in our contemporary reality: the urban reality is the “locus” in which the politics of a nations is decided, it is this urban society which characterizes our conception of world; it is no longer industrialization which is the guiding force of our present civilization but the urbanization. In my present research on the behavior of urban man in relation to the images perceived in this environment, I have encountered important discoveries for art. The proof of this is the large acceptance of my research in USA, Italy, France, Spain, and Germany particularly in Brazil, as well as in other countries where my work is seen through exhibitions, conferences and competitions.

The visual language obviously plays an important role in the behavior of the urban person. In the course of my research, it became evident that the architectural barriers (the urban design) within a city – a tactile dimension in the formative and behavioral patterns of the urban person – are the cause of much conflict. Observations have leaded me to the study of architectural barriers and of urbanization, not only in relation to the large urban mass, but also, in particular, to the paralytics and blind.

I am most interested in the situation of the blind, since this responds to the urban ambient using the method of conceptual thought similar to the analysis which I use in producing art. I have dedicated with particular interest one section of my present research to the blind. My analysis searches for ways in which they themselves would create works of art, not artisan as we are used to seeing, but learned, contemporary visual art, starting from the conceptual method of art, in which the person discovers himself and others by means of a conceptual analysis of himself of himself as an acting person in the world – for the blind person is also an urban person.

Through my study I am searching for an artistic methodology to an able the blind to be come “conceptual artist”, who can be citizens rather than isolated, and who can be evaluated through visual art. They will be also having the possibility of reaching the collective conscience via the conscience of the world, and this is the purpose of art.

From the presupposition the blind person becomes a social person, useful, thus escaping from a marginal situation of non-participation in urban life with which the contemporary world has unfortunately categorized him.

From the artistic point of view one can doubt the theories and aesthetics which maintain that art is only a vision of reality and valid only when it has the traditional theme, that is, the figure. This will also revise the history of art concerning the behavior of artists at the periods when they “did art”.

The blind person´s contribution is that art is before all else, a pure mental act one which can be valid not only for creating “figures” but also because it is a lived reality for the blind who are sensitive to the urban surrounding, and the same reality in which “we” are used to living and feeling.

At this time – with the need to develop and adapt technique – I am involved with courses in the research on all the information which can be useful for the developing of the analysis, and specifically, the technique of tactile and relief art, and then to be able to live in the surroundings of the blind.

By the Blind Institute in Recife I did a course of art called “The Architecture of the Symbol” (2000).

Roberto Da Silva

 Blind Institute

“In the Theories which I propose I take as my starting point the culture of the environment itself. It is the social dynamism which characterizes my society; the urban fetish which inspires so much of our music, theatre, literature, cinema, and also figurative art. In the urban setting the politics of a nation are decided. Here also we see that encounter between man and space, his conflicts, his joys, that complex of images which make the urban e symbol of work. Urban man is as much influenced by images as the rural dweller. From this complex system I try to draw out as artistic communication.”

Roberto Da Silva

Roberto Da Silva

Individual Exhibitions

1973 – OLINDA, Brazil. Pernambuco Contemporary Art Museum

1974 – RECIFE, Brazil. Liena Gallery

1980 – ROMA, Brazil. International New Art Gallery

1981 – VIENNA, Austria. Bank of Brazil – Contact Center

              ROMA, Italy. Studio AM16

1983 – MUNICH, Germany. Brazilian General Consulate

             ÜBERSEE FELDSWIES. Germany. Art´s House

1984 – WEINHEIM, Germany. Volksbank

1985 – ROMA, Italy. “Luigi Di Sarro” Contemporary Artistic Research Documentation Center

              MAINZ, Germany. The Renania Industrial and Commercial Chamber

              ROMA, Italy. Mikros Architecture

1986 – ROMA Italy. Space Studio

             RECIFE, Brazil. Aloisio Magalhães Metropolitan Art Gallery

1987 – MILAN, Italy. City Bank-CITIFIN Art Gallery

             POMPEIA-SÃO PAULO, Brazil. Monteiro Lobato Library

1992 – RECIFE, Brazil. Brazil-Italy Cultural Institute

2001 – ROMANS, France. Romans Museum

2003 – RECIFE, Brazil. Blind Institute

            RECIFE, Brazil. Marco Zero Square (Performance)

2008 – RECIFE, Brazil. Murillo La Greca Museum

Colective Exhibitions

1971 – JOÃO PESSOA, Brazil. Sacred Art Museum–San Francisco Church, Art Fair

1973 – OLINDA, Brazil. Pernambuco Contemporary Art Museum

             RECIFE, Brazil. State Museum

1975 – ATLANTA, USA. Fine Art Academy

             RECIFE, Brazil.  The Recife City Pinacotheca

1979 – ROMA, Italy. International New Art Gallery

1980 – FIRENZE, Italy. Il Cenacolo Gallery

              ROMA, Italy. “Casa do Brasil” Art  Gallery –  Brazilian Ambassy

             HEIDELBERG, Germany. Heidelberger Art Association

1981 – VIENNA, Austria. Artist house

             ROMA, Italia. Studio AM16

1982 – PARIS, France. Grand Palais des Champs Elysées

1984 – IBIZA, Spain, Ibiza Contemporary Art Museum – IBISAGRAFIC Biennial

             BRACELONA, Spain. Joan Miró Foundation

1985 – MAINZ, Germany. The Renania Industrial and Commercial Chamber

1986 – RECIFE, Brazil. Aloísio Magalhâes Metropolitan Art Gallery

1987 – BERLIN (DDR), Germany. INTERGRAFIC87 Graphic Biennial

1988 – RECIFE, Brazil. Brazil-Italy Cultural Institute (Urban Realism)

1990 – RECIFE, Brazil. Catholic University of Pernambuco

1992 – TOURNON, France. Tournon Atelier

1996 – MARSEILLE, France. Le Hors-Lá Cultural Association

              VARSAW, Poland. Plakatu Biennial

1998 – ROMA, Italy. The Rom Cultural Center

2001 – ROMANS, France. TRANS Gallery

2005 – RECIFE, Brazil. Maunel Bandeira Space-SARAIVA Book-Shop (The Pernambucain             School of Art)

2008 – RECIFE, Brazil. Murillo La Greca Museum