To understand the paintings of the artist Jair Gabriel da Costa as a “primitive or naive” work would be reductionism. This is because, if we take into account the classic definition of naif as a spontaneous expression, untied of method, free of conventions and, often, wrapped in an aura of a certain naivety, Jair Gabriel's painting goes beyond all these conceptual boundaries.

On May 5, the artist placed the Amazon art book, Nature in Highlight, on the market, bringing together 129 canvases, with a popular launch at the Palacete das Artes (Graça). The graphic work shows the registration of part of the production of a “caboco” born in 1950, in the city of Porto Velho, Rondônia, son of a rubber tapper, and who spent his childhood and part of his youth in the heart of the Amazon Forest. Self-taught, he only started painting at the age of 45, already living in Salvador.

Por meio da técnica do pontilhismo – na qual em lugar das pinceladas há o agrupamento de pequenos círculos que, meticulosa e pacientemente, são agrupados e ganham forma – ele conquistou, ao longo de mais de 20 anos de produção, o respeito e admiração de nomes como o artista plástico e cineasta Chico Liberato, da escritora Zélia Gattai e da conceituada crítica de arte Matilde Mattos.

É Matilde quem escreve: “A espantosa habilidade de desenvolver o pontilhismo promove o estilo e a qualidade da pintura de Jair Gabriel. Desenhados um a um, monocromáticos ou ganhando a superposição de outros em nova cor, os pontos do artista compõem, assim, os motivos, e tornam visível a paisagem ao fundo, imprimindo sombras e movimento à composição”.

Jair Gabriel

 Amazon, Featured Nature / Editora Capella

Playful and mystical

Jair Gabriel's canvases have the power to captivate the eye by bringing a profound load of beauty and mystery. The figures are composed in colors, sometimes vibrant and sometimes contained. Be it birds, plants or scenery tending towards a figurative abstraction, everything harmonizes in the strength of the technique mastered by the painter. In the perception of visual and academic artist Graça Ramos, the theme of Jair Gabriel “portrays figures full of mysticism, which remind us of jungle stories. These are distributed symmetrically, broken through the play of colors, which create a good rhythm ”.

Jair Gabriel, who had his first contact with the world of painting through the renowned Bahian plastic artist Edson da Luz, says that, since the beginning, he has been driven by intuition: “When I use a color, I already know which one will be next. I didn't study that ”.

It is a significant part of this universe that the book brings together. Organized by Ermanna Cavazzoli da Costa, curator of the artist's work, the publication provides information about exhibitions, as well as texts by artists and other specialists, such as Antonia Herrera, doctor in literature theory and comparative literature, and journalist and writer Carlos Ribeiro .

"The amazing painting by Jair Gabriel, made of art and invention, alive and beautiful, moves me". Words from the late Zélia Gattai.

Source: https://atarde.uol.com.br