Abelardo da Hora (São Lourenço da Mata PE 1924, Recife 2014)
Sculptor, designer, recorder, ceramist, teacher.
Abelardo Germano da Hora He was a Brazilian artist, illustrator, scenographer, professor, poet, lawyer and political activist. In the field of visual arts, he was a sculptor, draftsman, engraver, painter, ceramist, illustrator and graphic artist. Graduated in Fine Arts from the School of Fine Arts of Recife and in Law from the Faculty of Law of Olinda.
She was born on July 31, 1924 at Usina Tiúma, in São Lourenço da Mata (PE / Brazil). As a teenager, he takes a technical course in Decorative Arts, at the Pernambuco Technical School, in Recife. In 1939, Abelardo joined the School of Fine Arts in Recife. In the same year, he joined the sculpture course at this institution. He studied drawing, engraving, painting and sculpture, with a generation of great masters, before his, standing out with mastery and virtuosity in all techniques.
Hour Abelardo
From 1940, He began to join the Student Directorate of the School of Fine Arts and was elected its president in 1941, where he began to encourage students to visit “life out there”, leading groups of students to design and paint urban and rural landscapes, as well as the forests and the bustling life in the reef suburbs. His work drew the attention of industrialist Ricardo Brennand, who lived in the region and hired him, working with him from 1943 to 1945, carrying out several projects related to regional themes, fauna and flora, cultural manifestations, the daily life of the plant and adjacencies, in addition to orders from the ceramic industry customers, producing reliefs both in clay, artistic ceramics and terracotta(1).
In 1945 he traveled to Rio de Janeiro and settled in a pension in the city center. There, he met the brothers Augusto and Abelardo Rodrigues, and started to accompany the performance of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB) in the Chamber of Deputies of the then federal capital. He made the sculpture “A Família” to participate in the Salon of Fine Arts, which was suspended by President Dutra. In 1946, he returned to Recife(2). Abelardo spent the year 1947 preparing his first exhibition of sculptures, which was held in April 1948 at the Pernambuco Commerce Employees Association. In the exhibition's vernissage, he created the Society of Modern Art of Recife (SAMR), together with the architect Hélio Feijó and the artist Ladjane Bandeira, being president of SAMR for ten years.
From the 1950s onwards, Abelardo da Hora becomes a key player in the cultural movement of Pernambuco, contributing decisively to the way this state would be seen by the country in the field of the arts. The fruits of SAMR will generate the collective studio (1952 to 1957), where Abelardo was its president and coordinated actions in various aspects of the visual arts, teaching and forming groups of new artists, and generating regional, national and international exchanges, especially with the engraving clubs of other states(3). In the studio, he trained and worked together with other great artists, such as Corbiniano Lins, Ladjane Bandeira, José Cláudio, Gilvan Samico, Wilton de Souza, Ivan Carneiro, Wellington Virgolino, Reynaldo Fonseca, among others. In the political field, he was one of the founders of the Popular Culture Movement, during the administration of the then mayor of Recife Miguel Arraes de Alencar, in 1960.
Cria, between 1961 and 1963, the series “Meninos do Recife”, drawings At the beak of pen, where the master denounces the situation of poverty and risk of street children in the city, presenting a trait and style close to Cubism with an expressionist bias, typical of his work(4). Between the 1950s and 1960s, he populated the city of Recife with sculptures of popular themes and rounded shapes – typical of the Northeastern and Pernambuco traditions coming from Vitalino; as well as urban furniture projects, monuments; And he also made the first large-scale public sculpture of the “dynamism space” (or kinetic art) in Brazil, in 1961: the lighting tower, which was now called the Torre neighborhood, in Recife – having been destroyed by the military during the coup. It also produces works in the field of muralism, both for Recife and for other capitals in the Northeast – a work that also led to the end of life, at the end of, in 2012, a series of murals for the facades of public hospitals in Pernambuco(5).
next to its Work as an artist, he had an equal participation in politics, having been a member of the PCB until the 1964 military coup and being an important figure in the processes of the redemocratization of the country. With the coup, Abelardo was also removed from his role as Secretary of Education and Culture at Recife City Hall, and arrested, along with the leader of the Gregório Bezerra party. From this, he, Gregório and other party members (such as Jorge Amado and Oscar Niemeyer) leave the PCB, but maintain the progressive militancy.
Unable to work in Recife, Abelardo moved to São Paulo, where He was received by his friend Lina Bo Bardi and her husband Pietro Maria Bardi, director of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP). In this city, he launched the collection of drawings “Popular Brazilian Carnival Dances”, a meticulous work of evocation of typically Brazilian dances, from various regions, where he used his drawing and his unmistakable trait in ink, adding colors in acrylic, with vernissage at the Mirante das Artes Gallery. From 1966 onwards, he started working at TV Tupi, where he signed scenarios for the channel's productions, with emphasis on his work in the soap opera “A Ré Misteriosa”, whose project was awarded at the IV International Industry Fair (known as Fenit). On his return to Recife, he became a businessman, in the 1970s with his brother Luciano, from the fishing and fisheries sector, but continues his artistic activity.
Also in the 1970s, he spent a season in Paris, working, living with the local artistic scene and participating of collective exhibitions. Upon returning to Recife, he returns to produce intensely, whether the new series of sculptures with the theme of women – which led to the end of his life; Whether ceramic works with motifs of fauna, flora, and Afro-Brazilian culture, especially about the deities of Candomblé.
Abelardo has always played a decisive role in the design of the playful landscape of the city of Recife, since the 1950s, with the development of several sculptures of popular themes for public squares in the city, the iconic concrete slides in children's parks, or with the suggestion to the public power to place sculptures in built areas with more than a thousand square meters (approved by the Recife City Council, becoming law). From the 1980s onwards, he began to populate private buildings and shopping centers in the city with his sculptures of gigantic women in concrete.
“When he shapes an arm of one of his goddesses, we have the unique feeling of being distinguished with the privilege of witnessing the birth of Venus, Ceres, beauty and fecundity, when God created the flesh.”
(José Cláudio)(6)
In the years 1980, participates in major exhibitions across the country, including cities such as São Paulo and Rio De Janeiro. In 1983, he was elected president of the Association of Plastic Artists of Pernambuco and appointed member of the Municipal Council of Culture, by the City of Recife. In 1986, the Abelardo da Hora sculpture space was created, belonging to the Recife City Hall, on the banks of the Capibaribe River, one of the city's postcards. In the same year, he returned to exhibit in Paris, at the International Center for Contemporary Art(7).
Intellectual with a background in arts and law, from the 1990s to the 2010s he became a constant figure in the media of Pernambuco, giving opinions on the issues of the state, country and world. In this period, he received several tributes and decorations, including the Medal of the Order of Merit of Guararapes, by the then governor of Pernambuco Eduardo Campos, the Commendation of the Order of Cultural Merit (Grand Cross Class), by then President Dilma Rousseff, and the Commendation of the Order of Rio Branco (Class Commander), by the then president Fernando Henrique Cardoso. He inaugurated, still in life, from 2004 onwards, the Instituto Abelardo da Hora (IAH), with Abelardo Filho as executive director and his grandson Daniel da Hora as cultural director. With the IAH projects, he now has his work published on various editorial platforms, both printed and digital, and wins itinerant exhibitions in several cities in Brazil and abroad, even after his death.
His work has always been marked by great concern with social issues, Presenting, according to the critic Geraldo Ferraz, “an expressionism of contortions, of incisions, of bitter and deep, in-depth design, in the cement, in the bronze or in the marble, peculiarly in the first of these materials, which is preferred by the artist for his character so hard and so rough, the that adds suffering to the figures.” Friend of an entire generation of other important artists, intellectuals and politicians, he was a respected figure and one of the most celebrated creators in the country, having participated, throughout his career, in individual and collective exhibitions in several capitals of Brazil, especially São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, João Pessoa and Recife. He also participated in international exhibitions in several European countries, including France, Italy, England, Portugal; In addition to the United States, Canada, Russia, Israel, Mongolia, Argentina, Peru, Romania and China.
celebrated its 90 years of life, in July 2014, inaugurating another monument, this time dedicated to football, which is in front to the Pernambuco Arena (stadium built for the 2014 FIFA World Cup). On September 23, 2014, Abelardo da Hora, hospitalized, dies in Recife, due to respiratory complications.
Between 2014 and 2015 gains retrospective exposition across the country, finishing the show in the city of Recife. In March 2022, the Abelardo da Hora Memorial was inaugurated in João Pessoa (PB-BRA), a museum dedicated to the legacy of this master, with more than 250 works, including sculptures, drawings, paintings, prints, tapestries; as well as studies, mockups, projects and unfinished works. With the curatorship and expography coordination of grandson Daniel da Hora, he ended up becoming the largest biographical museum about an expressionist artist in all the Americas(8).
Context and work (analysis)
The sculpture in Brazil can be Characterized from two points of view: the popular root, vernacular, notably in the representation of its manifestations and having as an example the also from Pernambuco, Mestre Vitalino (1909 – 1963); and the aspect linked to European schools, from the Baroque, from Aleijadinho. In this aspect, perhaps the greatest revolution in this art in our country has happened precisely in a region that has always been cosmopolitan and a privileged port in contact with Europe – Recife. It was there that, in 1948, everything that was known about sculpture in Brazil changed radically, with the first exhibition by Abelardo da Hora. His land and his people, and their conditions of misery and poverty, using especially sculpture (unprecedented in the art of Brazil), Abelardo inaugurates a new look at what the themes of a work of art should be and about how sculpture will be seen in the country – in contrast to the who was taught in Brazilian academies(9).
“His art, sensitive to the plastic and visual values of modernism, is neither episodic nor makes concessions”.
(Mário Barata)10
A lot is said about which influences were remarkable in Abelardo's work. Certainly in his training, with professors such as Baltazar da Câmara, Casimiro Correia, Murillo Lagreca, and Emílio Franzozi, the echoes of European modernism were already flying by cruise. Or even the first echoes coming from the reef tradition of being modern before the modern officers, from Cícero Dias, Lula Cardoso Ayres or Vicente do Rêgo Monteiro – a fact that was little known, Recife, in the 1930s, was the first city in Brazil to receive An exhibition with works by Picasso, Léger, Miró and Braque – the so-called “Escola de Paris”.
The vision and possibility of a “Brazilian art” have always been present between artists and intellectuals from Recife since the turn of the 20th century and in Brazil from the years 1920. But Abelardo, when portraying the migrant, the favelado, the boy from Mocambo, his mother with his malnourished children, starts from a truth and a place of speech that is of his right, but he sublimates all this from the art of Expressionist bias, with great influence from Cubism, as other great Brazilian artists contemporary to it did.
“(…) of contortions, of incisions, of bitter and deep, in-depth design, in the cement, in the bronze or in the marble, peculiarly in the first of these materials, which is preferred by the artist for his character so hard and so rough, which adds suffering to the figures. So, Abelardo da Hora, for his themes, managed, for his themes, an expressiveness of his own, blistering and lasting for a while, aggressive and manifesting to the highest degree, which gives him a very prominent place in Brazilian sculpture, so devoid of live protests.”
(GERALDO Ferraz)11
Bringing his expressionist view of the social themes linked to his people, and with a “drawing” of sculpture close to Cubism, in its first phase (1940s) Abelardo He presented for the country and for the world an amazing mastery of the technique of sculpture, the form, the proportions, but – and above all – brought a new aspect in the use of concrete, transforming something hard and robust into something plastic and flexible. brado”, present this unmistakable mark of the artist.
This mixture, Abelardo and concrete, was fundamental for the establishment of the panorama of modern art in the Northeast, with reflections in other regions. Considered the greatest expressionist sculptor in Brazil, this genius of form, master of Generations of other artists of great importance on the national scene, made his art full of love and solidarity, showing social denunciation and beauty, and passing, with equal mastery, other techniques, such as drawing, engraving, painting and ceramics, in a production as rich and complex as is also Brazilian art.
“It would be impossible for any attempt to see two facets of Abelardo da Hora in isolation. The artist drawing, sculpting, teaching, or political man fighting, arguing for the ideal of union of a class, of a Brazilian, northeastern creation. Impossible to separate. The battles for the Society of Modern Art of Recife and the collective atelier are the same that they still engage today with clay, spatulas and huge plaster forms. and conveys all this in his work. This spirit of struggle, this expressionist vigor that influenced a certain fraction of Pernambuco artists are outstanding aspects of Abelardo.”
(Alex Molt'Elberto)12
In his drawings and Paintings, different themes, ranging from local fauna and flora, popular revelry, the representation of the mysteries of Afro-Brazilian culture, as well as the female beauty and innocence of the child, are perennial. “Philosophical” with the Mexican movement of the 1920s and 1930s, but Abelardo will use more simplified features and a smaller color palette, continuing in his closest vein to Cubism.
Abelardo He was an artist ahead of his time and he will be eternal. His work and legacy will continue to echo strong, firm, and with the usual eloquence; enchanting people and making them think, a definitive role in art, and a permanent effort by the best artists.
Notes
1 – LEAL, Weydson B. Rehearsal with Abelardo da Hora. Recife: CEPE, 2005.
2 – Brazil: Art of the Northeast. Rio de Janeiro: Spala, 1986.
3 – Cláudio, José. Memories of the Collective Atelier: Recife 1952-1957. Recife, Artespaço.
4 – Art in Brazil. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1979.
5 – CAVALCANTI, Carlos; Ayala, Walmir, ed. Brazilian Dictionary of Plastic Artists. Brasília: MEC/INL, 1980.
6 – CLÁUDIO, José. Memories of the Collective Atelier: Recife 1952-1957. Recife, Artespaço.
7 – LEAL, Weydson B. Essay with Abelardo da Hora. Recife: CEPE, 2005.
8 – Government of Paraíba – Website: Governador Inaugurates Abelardo da Hora Memorial, 2022.
9 – Drawing in Pernambuco. Presentation by Renato Magalhães Gouvêa. Text by Adam Pinheiro. Recife: Gatsby Arte, 1976.
10 – In ZANINI, Walter (coord.). General History of Art in Brazil. São Paulo, Instituto Moreira Salles.
11 – In Bruscky, Paulo; LEITE, Ronildo Maia (Org.). Abelardo of all hours. Recife: Fundarpe.
12 – In CAVALCANTI, Carlos (Org.). Brazilian Dictionary of Plastic Artists. Brasília, Record.
Bibliographic references
AMARAL, Aracy. Art for what?: Social concern in Brazilian art 1930-1970: subsidy for a social history of art in Brazil. São Paulo: Nobel, 1984.
Art in Brazil. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1979.
Brazil: Art of the Northeast. Rio de Janeiro: Spala, 1986.
Bruscky, Paulo (Org.); LEITE, Ronildo Maia (Org.). Abelardo of all hours. Recife: Fundarpe, 1988. 80 p., il.
CLAÚdio, José. Memory of the Collective Atelier: Recife 1952-1957. Recife: Artespaço; São Paulo: Renato Magalhães Gouvêa – Art Office, 1978.
Art from Pernambuco. Recife: Group X, 1987. [84] p., il. Color.
CAVALCANTI, Carlos; Ayala, Walmir, ed. Brazilian Dictionary of Plastic Artists. Presentation by Maria Alice Barroso. Brasília: MEC/INL, 1973-1980. (Specialized Dictionaries, 5).
Brazilian Dictionary of Plastic Artists. Organization Carlos Cavalcanti and Walmir Ayala. Brasília: National Book Institute, 1973-1980. 4v. (Specialized Dictionaries, 5).
The drawing in Pernambuco. Presentation by Renato Magalhães Gouvêa. Text by Adam Pinheiro. Recife: Gatsby Arte, 1976.
Pinacoteca: Pernambuco State Museum. Recife: Pernambuco State Museum, 1991. PEMEP 1991
ZANINI, Walter (org.). General History of Art in Brazil. São Paulo: Djalma Guimarães Foundation: Walther Moreira Salles Institute, 1983.
Source: Artist's Site / By: Daniel da Hora (teacher, researcher, curator and visual artist.)
