Véio

Cícero Alves dos Santos, or “Véio” as he is known, takes up a unique position within the Brazilian art environment. His works reveal dimensions that are significantly different from what we call ‘popular art.’ His sculptures combine aspects of the popular tradition—sculptures in wood, use of the figures suggested by tree trunks and branches, and the use of rudimentary tools—with intense colors, much closer to industrial than to the delicate shades of nature. This stridence, of a somewhat pop nature, is intensified by a formidable imagination, which makes us see hybrid figures in his wood works—figures that blend the characteristics of the animals we know with those of the androids and transformers present in films and cartoons.

Using just a penknife, Véio also sculpts forms that are minute in size, but bare an enigmatic appearance, bringing back a force once reduced by scale. Men and women climb and go down mountains for no apparent reason, animals straddle each other, and women carry animal body parts on their heads. In these small sculptures, there is a more realistic aspect present in the carving of the shapes of people and animals. The talent of this artist has made the preservation of the memories of his people into his very reason for existence. Memory is not nostalgia. For this reason, to affirm the entirety of an art originating from a rural world that is steadily disappearing, Véio had to become the creator of an artistic category that did not exist. 

Courtesy of Galeria Estação