Antônio Poteiro (1925 - 2010)
Antônio Poteiro was a sculptor, painter and ceramist, known for his significant contributions to Brazilian popular art. Born in Minas Gerais, he immigrated with his family to São Paulo in 1926. Later, he lived in Araguari and Uberlândia, where he began his activity as a ceramist, creating utilitarian pieces. During his trajectory, he set up two ceramic factories, which unfortunately went bankrupt, leading him to spend a long period between the Indians on the island of Bananal, in Goiás. 1957, under the guidance of folklorist Regina Lacerda, adopted the nickname of Antônio Poteiro, starting to sign his ceramic works with that name. His creations began to present regional motifs and biblical themes, reflecting the influences of his experience and the cultures he came into contact with. In 1972, already known as a ceramist, he was encouraged by artists Siron Franco and Cleber Gouvêa to explore the painting. Since then, he began to exhibit his works in exhibitions in Brazil and abroad, standing out as a multifaceted artist.
In addition to his artistic production, Antônio Poteiro also taught ceramics, sharing his knowledge at the SESC activities center and in cities in Germany, as Hannover and Düsseldorf. In 1985, he was awarded the award of the Paulista Association of Art Critics (APCA) in the sculpture category. In 1997, he received one of the highest tributes in the country, the Commendation of the Order of Cultural Merit, granted by the Ministry of Culture of Brazil. to make small clay dolls. He also dedicates himself to painting, encouraged by Siron Franco (1947), and gradually develops his ability to colorist. As the critic Olívio Tavares de Araújo points out, Poteiro maintains a coherent style, both in the formal procedures he develops and in the very personal use of color. Its themes are varied and range from the fauna of the Pantanal of Mato Grosso to subjects of religious history, addressed in an original way.
Its canvases and ceramics are full of small figures of houses, animals, streams, people and details ornamentals that fill all empty spaces, and are treated with detail and technical acuity. He carries out a series addressing the 500 years of the history of Brazil, in which he maintains the personal and creative view of the themes, characteristic of his works. Subtle commentator of the great theater of the world. He tells or invents fables, traces parables, changes their meaning. In the obsessive ornamental variations that cover the skin of his ceramics and paintings, the irreverence of situations and the rigor of the Images now plastically materialize that activity he dreamed of for himself - that of a poet and singer.
In the theater of his painting, each painting is a screen where the different figurations that are inscribed in it give replica to each other, as the actors of a magic; or lodging in the verticality of the screen plane, they find themselves traveling in an unlimited space - as the aeronaut who poteiro would fly, when a boy, he also aspired to become. 'Everything is one thing'. Between innocence and wisdom, where to put the border? replies Poteiro: 'Everything is one thing'. Or: 'I summon to God, the devil comes out, look. I invoke the devil, come out God'. And don't mess with your gods, that their naturalness has little to do with the catechisms that teach that evil is on one side and the good on the other, an artifice that never served but to (supposedly) tame flocks of unhappy. The art of a poteiro is conceived without sin: innocence knows no sin, just as wisdom is without presumption. Because if presumption is contrary to innocence, it is also the opposite of wisdom and walks around the world to want to take the place of both and make even more unhappy ones. The presumptuous of the celestial cavalhadas will be laughed among, for example, turtles and lizards, animals that are not saddle or move away from the earth. But Poteiro, who says as a boy not having played, knows today how delicious the rule of dreams is, which is after all the rule of all creation - the transformation of the relationships to which things seemed irremediably embarrassed".
Júlio Pomar
Pomar, Júlio. Fabulous Poteiro Poteiro, Antonio Painting - Ceramics Brasilia: Performance Gallery of Art, 1987.
"Poster does not like theory about his work. 'I don't know who I am, I just know that I take the clay and I do it', he summarizes. Half grumpy, he adds: 'I don't know why the people complicate things too much'. That's what he is: a storyteller. He draws, with whim, secrets, anguish, hopes, prejudices and the generosity of the people of the countryside. Sometimes, Poteiro becomes João-de-Barro, the bird that builds its nest with the solidity of the architecture of instinct, of creativity. Poteiro brings, at the base of his work, that life of a man from the countryside, simple and safe, in which people made flour, washed their clothes, plowed their land and the children played in backyards. This is your experience and ideal. The sculpture grows, the figures are huddled in smaller and smaller spaces, they squeezed around television sets, piled up to the floors of the roofs, it is the timid protest of the interior man against the people who have unlearned to talk: 'They were silent in front of the TV', complains."
Etevaldo Dias
Dias, Etevaldo. The art of pots. SP. General Catalog São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo: Marca D'água, 1991. p.185.
"Antônio Poteiro is a force of the earth, energy of nature fed on the inheritance of syncretism; Vigorous manifestation of popular culture, it is a barbaric, wild, animal creative force. That's why the earth, in the texture of clay, was the first matter to make the salt of the miracle in his potter's hands. From the utilitarian dimension of the pot, this poteiro, reinventor of myths and antenna of the race became the interpreter of the human and rich popular life. He remained pure and naive, keeping himself uncomfortable with the electronic massification that imbeciliized the mass media. From there came the poteiro artist, who was always vibration and energy in him, from the rough Minho of his origin. How not to see, in his God balances and in his god Solomon, the sense of justice, so common in life and popular culture? In his Maria Balaio, Maria Jiló, Maria Doida, the magician of clay evokes memories of all the Marias that inhabit the peripheries of Latin American countries. In so much green and in so much an animal, the standardized pattern of the ecologist on duty, or an echo of an environmentalist fad, cannot be seen. Poteiro is, in himself, earth; understands the silence of the tree germinating in the seeds; He knows the language and being of animals and feels, in the powerful intuition that he is gifted, that nothing is real outside of man. In the carnival, 'the feast of the flesh', there is no appeal to the folkloric - there is, yes, the magical moment, when favelados become kings and queens; For this demiurge of clay and colors, sage and poet that he is, also knows that to live in suffering it takes a little light, wonder and fantasy".
Brasigóis Felício
A. Poteiro, Sousa Netto: Ceramics and Painting Campinas: MAC - José Pancetti, 1993.
Individual exhibitions
1976 - Ouro Preto MG - Ceramics and Painting, at the FAOP Gallery
1978 - Cuiabá MT - Ceramics and Painting, at the UFMT Museum of Popular Art and Culture
1980 - Goiânia GO - Individual, at the Casa Grande Art Galeria
1981 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the Bonino Gallery
1982 - Brasília DF - Individual, at Oscar Seraphico Art Gallery
1983 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the Bonino Gallery
1984 - São Paulo SP - Individual, at the São Paulo Art Gallery
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the Bonino Gallery
1985 - Guayaquil (Ecuador) - Individuals, at the Guayasamin Foundation
1985 - Quito (Ecuador) - Individuals, at the Foundation Guayasamin
1985 - Cuenca (Ecuador) - Individuals, at the Guayasamin Foundation
1986 - Estoril (Portugal) - Individual, at the Casino Art Gallery
1986 - Washington (United States) - Individual, at the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute
1987 - Brasília DF - Individual, at the Embassy of Portugal. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
1987 - Brasília DF - Individual, at Performace Art Gallery
1987 - Estoril (Portugal) - Individual, at the Casino Art Gallery
1987 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at Varsailles Art Gallery
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at Galeria Bonino
1991 - Brasília DF - Individual, Embassy of France. Galeria Le Corbusier
1994 - São Paulo SP - Individual, at the São Paulo Art Gallery
1996 - Belo Horizonte MG - Individual, at Manoel Macedo Art Office
1996 - Goiânia GO - Retrospective 33 years old: ceramics and painting, at Fundação Jaime Câmara. Casa Grande Gallery
1997 - São Paulo SP - Individual, at the Nara Roesler Gallery
2000 - Brasília DF - 500 years of Brazil. By Antonio, The Brazilian Poteiro, at the National Theater Cláudio Santoro
Collective exhibitions
1967 - Salvador BA - Cerâmica, at the Salvador Museum
1968 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Ceramics, at the Museum of Art Popular
1970 - Goiânia GO - State Museum Professor Zoroastro Artiaga
1972 - New Orleans (United States) - Ceramic press conference at Salomé Gallery
1974 - How (Italy) - 1st Biennale Internazionale Naïf
1974 - Goiânia GO - 1st National Salon of Plastic Arts of Caixego - Acquisition Award
1975 - Goiânia GO - 2nd National Plastic Arts Hall of Caixego - Goiano Painter Award
1976 - Goiânia GO - 3rd National Salon of Plastic Arts of Caixego
1976 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Popular Art/Jacques de Benqué Collection, in the MAM/RJ
1976 - Santo André SP - 9th Salon of Contemporary Art of Santo André, at the Municipal Palace
1976 - São Paulo SP - National Biennial, at the Bienal Foundation
1976 - Goiânia GO - 1st Business Salon of Plastic Arts
1976 - São Paulo SP - Ceramics of the SESI Salon, at SESI
1977 - Goiânia GO - 4th National Salon of Plastic Arts of Caixego - Funarte Best Artist of the Planalto Award Central
1977 - Goiânia GO - 4th Art Salon Frei Confaloni
1978 - Brasília DF - Embassy of Mexico
1978 - Mexico City (Mexico) - four artists from Goiás, at the Instituto of Higher Studies
1978 - Mexico City (Mexico) - Four artists from Goiás, at the Casa de Cultura de Monterrey
1978 - Mexico City (Mexico) - four artists from Goiás, at the Instituto Ateneu Fuentes de Saltillo
1978 - Mexico City (Mexico) - Four artists from Goiás, at the Casa de Cultura de Guanajuato
1978 - Mexico City (Mexico) - four artists from Goiás, at the National Institute of Fine Arts
1978 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Ceramics and Painting, at the SESC Activities Center
1978 - San Francisco (United States) - Brazilian Naïf Painters, at the Naïve Art Gallery
1978 - São Paulo SP - 1st Latin American Biennial of São Paulo, at the Bienal Foundation
1980 - Lombardy (Italy) - 4th Biennale Internazionale Naïf
1980 - Fiera (Italy) - 4th Biennale Internazionale Naïf
1980 - Ente (Italy) - 4th Biennale Internazionale Naïf
1980 - Estoril (Portugal) - Naïf Painting Hall, At the Estoril Casino Art Gallery
1980 - Philippines - Collective, promoted by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
1980 - Romania - Collective, promoted by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
1980 - Goiânia GO - 9 sculptors, at the Casa Grande Galeria de Arte
1980 - Hannover (Germany) - Collective, promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil
1980 - Düsseldorf (Germany) - Collective, promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil
1981 - São Paulo SP - 16th International Biennial of São Paulo, at the Bienal Foundation
1982 - Bauru SP - 80 years of art Brazilian
1982 - Belo Horizonte MG - 14th Belo Horizonte National Art Salon, at MAP - Belo Horizonte City Hall Grand Prix
1982 - Marília SP - 80 years of Brazilian art
1982 - São Paulo SP - 80 years of Brazilian art, at MAB/FAAP
1983 - Belo Horizonte MG - 80 years of Brazilian art, at the Clóvis Salgado Foundation. Palácio das Artes
1983 - Campinas SP - 80 years of Brazilian art, at Macc
1983 - Curitiba PR - 80 years of Brazilian art, at MAC/PR
1983 - Ribeirão Preto SP - 80 years of Brazilian Art
1983 - Santo André SP - 80 years of Brazilian art, at the City Hall
1983 - São Paulo SP - 14th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1984 - Fortaleza CE - 7th National Salon of Plastic Arts
1984 - Goiânia GO - 2nd sculptors of Goiânia, at Itaugaleria
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 7th National Salon of Plastic Arts, at MAM/RJ
1985 - Brasília DF - Brasilidade e Independência, at the Cláudio Santoro National Theater
1985 - São Paulo SP - 16th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1987 - France (Paris) - Brésil, Art Populaire Contemporain, at the Grand Palais
1987 - Rabat (Morocco) - Brésil-Naïfs, at the Bàb Rouah Gallery
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - O Mundo Fascinating of the Naifs painters, at the Paço Imperial
1988 - Tokyo (Japan) - Brazilian primitive painting exhibition, at The Ginza Art Space
1990 - Brasília DF - Brasília Award for Plastic Arts, MAB/DF
1990 - São Paulo SP - Painting, presence and people in Brazilian art, at the Brazilian House Museum
1991 - São Paulo SP - 21st São Paulo International Biennial, at the Bienal Foundation
1992 - Belo Horizon MG - A. Poteiro, Lorenzato, Rodelégio, at Manoel Macedo Art Gallery
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Long live the Brazilian people, at MAM/RJ
1992 - Tokyo (Japan) - The Ginza Art Space
1993 - Goiânia GO - 3rd Goiás Arts Biennial, at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Goiás
1994 - Juiz de Fora MG ? America, at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora. Rectory
1994 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Naïf painting, at Universidade Católica Portuguesa
1994 - Piracicaba SP - Brazilian Bienal de Arte Naif, at Sesc Piracicaba
1994 - São Paulo SP - Landscapes
1995 - Brasília DF - Collections of Brasília, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Palácio do Itamaraty
1995 - São Paulo SP - Filhos do Abaporu, in the art of Brazil
1996 - Leverkusen (Germany) - Brasilianische Kunst der Gegenwart, at Bayer AG - Foyer Hochhaus W1
1996 - Dormagen (Germany) - Brasilianische Kunst der Gegenwart, at Bayer AG - Feierabendhaus
1996 - Piracicaba SP - 3rd Bienal Naifs do Brasil, at SESC Piracicaba
1996 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1997 - Porto Alegre RS - Exhibition of the Caixa Collection, in the Caixa Cultural Complex
1997 - Porto Alegre RS - Parallel Exhibition, at the Caixa Econômica Federal Museum
1997 - São Paulo SP - Exhibition of the Caixa Collection, at the Caixa Cultural Complex
1998 - Catalão GO - 60 artists in the 60th anniversary of the newspaper O Popular, at the Municipal Forum
1998 - Curitiba PR - Exhibition of the Caixa Collection, at the Caixa Cultural Complex
1998 - Goiânia GO - 60 artists in the 60th anniversary of the newspaper O Popular, at the Jaime Câmara Foundation
1998 - Itumbiara GO - 60 artists in the 60th anniversary of the newspaper O Popular, at the Casa de Cultura de Itumbiara
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 16th National Salon of Plastic Arts, at MAM/RJ
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Exhibition of the CAIXA collection, at the Caixa Cultural Complex
1998 - Rio Verde GO - 60 artists in the 60th anniversary of the newspaper O Popular, at the Municipal Department of Science, Technology and Culture. Palace of the Intendency
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brasilidades, at the Light Cultural Center
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition, at the Biennial Foundation
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian ceramics: construction of a language, in the Brazilian British center
2001 - Brasília DF - Forma-and-color as light in the naïves, at Galeria Itaú Cutural
2001 - Penápolis SP - Forma-E-Cor as light in Naïfs, at the Itaú Cutural Gallery
2002 - Piracicaba SP - 6th Naifs do Brasil Biennial, at Sesc Piracicaba
2002 - São Paulo SP - Pop Brazil: the popular art and the popular in art, at CCBB
2003 - Porto Alegre RS - Humanities, at the Tina Zappoli Gallery
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - BrazilianArt Project, at Almacén Art Gallery
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Treasures da Caixa: Brazilian modern art in the Caixa collection, in the Caixa Cultural Complex
2003 - São Paulo SP - Paper and Three-dimensional, at Arvani Arte
2004 - São Paulo SP - Collective of contemporary artists, at Esporte Clube Sírio
Source: Itaú Cultural