JÚLIO POMAR, Júlio Artur da Silva Pomar (1926-2018), Óleo sobre tela, 162 x 130,5 cm.

JÚLIO POMAR, Júlio Artur da Silva Pomar (1926-2018), Óleo sobre tela, 162 x 130,5 cm.
JÚLIO POMAR, Júlio Artur da Silva Pomar (1926-2018)
"Os Mascarados de Pirenópolis" - XII
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated 1987 (front and back)
Dim. approx.: 162 x 130.5 cm.; Dec. total approx.: 166 x 134.5 cm.

Back with title indication. Framed.
Cat. Gallery 111 (Arco 88, Madrid) "Os Mascarados de Pirenópolis", with text (Spanish and English) by Manuel Castro Caldas.

The Brazilian paintings by Pomar, "Mascarados" and "Índios", were born from observation direct, they are painting of travel and observation, which includes the precise reference to what the painter saw, in the place, later seeing, in the studio, 'what happens on the canvas'. The riders are seen advancing on the spectator – on the painter, who sees them arrive from the tribune where he was, and - later, in the studio - on the painter and observer who looks frontally at the painting, in execution or in exhibition). As on so many other occasions, the painter saw the horses trooping, racing (in the 'Les Courses' series) and from the front (for example the large tapestries at CGD's headquarters). It is a subject that is very specific to him and for which he questions possibilities for treating space and the appearance-definition of form between figure and background, when the latter still exists, in the succession of superimposed bodies that launch at speed. (...)
In: "From Brazil. Goiás and Xingu, Brasília, 1986-90 to 2004", in Alexandre Pomar's book, "Júlio Pomar. After Neo-Realism", in press.
"What fascinated me about the cavalhadas in Pirenópolis was not finding again, in the interior of Brazil, a Portuguese tradition, the feasts of the Divine Holy Spirit, as they are practiced in the Azores. What filled my eyes was what, in Pirenópolis, here invented (...) the whole city is another festival, paraded through, from morning to sunset, by the knights of the common people who invent the most varied fantasies, recreating eternal myths – the ox, the jaguar, the devil, death (...) That moment when hundreds of knights (of the apocalypse?) charge up and stop, suddenly, in front of the tribunes, is indescribable, something from the end of the world. These poor knights are the triumph of the imagination, each one dresses up and adorns the mount with the means at his disposal, paper flowers, glass, colored ribbons, new calico or old rags, bells, rattles or coconut cans a-glue with pebbles inside. The bull mask dominates, the jaguar appears with his tricks, the devil dialogues with death, everyday carnival masks also have their place there, alongside others invented at the time: a painted card, a bag with holes. This invention is a mark of vitality, of playful explosion. (...) If the spectacle of the terreiro (battles) is a ritual with a beginning, middle and end, the participation of the masked men is a representation without time. It is an existence and not the narration of a story, and this is where the approximation of the myth is strongest, bleeding the sacred. Color and movement, and the resulting sounds, mutually exacerbate each other. The contrasts of colors and materials that the participants wear or hide, even on horses only the legs are almost exposed, multiplying and demultiplying as the race goes on; everything melts into a vertiginous transfiguration of reality. It is the Kingdom of the Mask, assumption of the Real more real than reality."
Statements by the artist in "Pomar/ Brasil", interview by Júlio Pomar by Paulo Herkenhof, published in the Revista do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico, Rio de Janeiro, Nº Especial 1999, pp. 67-77.