Carlos Pertuis (Rio de Janeiro RJ 1910 - idem 1977)
Painter, draftsman, sculptor, printmaker.
In 1939, he was committed to the Hospital da Praia Vermelha in Rio de Janeiro after a cosmic vision of the "Planetarium of God" - according to his account - triggered by a reflection of sunlight in the mirror of his bedroom. While in hospital, he made drawings on paper towels and stored them in shoeboxes. In 1946, on learning of this work, the painter Almir Mavignier (1925) referred him to the studio of the Setor de Terapia Ocupacional e Reabilitação - STOR, of the Instituto Municipal de Assistência à Saúde Nise da Silveira (formerly the Centro Psiquiátrico Pedro II). Pertuis attended the painting studio and the bookbinding workshop and took care of cleaning the institution's museum. He produced around 21,500 works, from drawings to prints, and took part in solo and group exhibitions in Brazil and abroad. Part of his work - preserved by the Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente - was included in 2005 in an exhibition held during the Year of Brazil in France. The artist's life is told in the film A Barca do Sol [The Sun Boat], by Leon Hirszman (1937 - 1987).
Critical Commentary
Carlos Pertuis produced his artistic work between 1946 and 1977 in the studio of the Setor de Terapia Ocupacional e Reabilitação - STOR of what is now the Instituto Municipal de Assistência à Saúde Nise da Silveira (formerly the Centro Psiquiátrico Pedro II), in Rio de Janeiro. He worked alongside other artists of the studio, such as Adelina (1916 - 1984), Arthur Amora, Emygdio de Barros (1895 - 1986), Fernando Diniz (1918 - 1999), Isaac (1906 - 1966), Octávio Ignacio (1926 - 1980) and Raphael (1912 - 1979). His paintings and drawings stand out for their broad command of color and geometric forms, and for their repertoire of images of fantastic beings and imaginary landscapes. The series Seres Fantásticos [Fantastic Beings], n.d., for example, presents in each picture a figure occupying almost the entire sheet, usually set against a dotted background. The images in the series refer to parts of the human body, of animals and of celestial elements that blend together (tails, crests, stars, legs, etc.), resulting in a hybrid being that is invariably bipedal.
The critic Mário Pedrosa (1900 - 1981) describes Carlos Pertuis as "the man of precise contours, of clear, well-defined forms, in which there is almost no modeling and style is given by the play of contrasts and the demands of symmetrical order (...) For Carlos (...) the universe is a pure spatial order, a kind of eternity without succession, always present, actualized, stripped of any notion of time (...)".1
Note
1 See PEDROSA, Mário. In: MELLO, Luiz Carlos; SILVEIRA, Nise da; CUNHA, Márcia Leitão da. Brasil Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente: Bilder des Unbewussten aus Brasilien = Images of the unconscious from Brazil =. São Paulo: Câmara Brasileira do Livro, 1994. p. 161.
Critiques
"Carlos (...) is the man of precise contours, of clear, well-defined forms, in which there is almost no modeling and style is given by the play of contrasts and the demands of symmetrical order. In him, the objective and the subjective tend to merge under a dominating architectural organization. Within it, objective or concrete forms, when they remain intact, are bent to the service of order, of an ideal purpose unconscious to the artist. He has a generally sharp overall vision, outside time and without any connection to time. For Carlos, time does not exist. The universe is a pure spatial order, a kind of eternity without succession, always present, actualized, stripped of any notion of time. Carlos's art is severely formalistic and spatial. Neither measurements of time nor motifs of reminiscence enter into it. (...) The problem that excites him is space".
Mário Pedrosa
Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente. Texto de Nise da Silveira et al. Rio de Janeiro: INSTITUTO NACIONAL DE ARTES PLÁSTICAS, 1980. (Museus brasileiros, 2).
Solo Exhibitions
1977 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Thirty Years of Painting by Carlos Pertuis - 1947/1977, at Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente
Group Exhibitions
1949 - São Paulo SP - 9 Artists from Engenho de Dentro, at MAM/SP
1950 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 9 Artists from Engenho de Dentro, at Salão Nobre da Câmara Municipal
1955 - Neuchâtel (Switzerland) - Exhibition of Brazilian Primitive and Modern Art, at Museu de Etnografia
1963 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Exhibition, at Galeria Vila Rica
Posthumous Exhibitions
1987 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Innumerable States of Being, at Paço Imperial
1999 - São Paulo SP - Transcendences: Boxes of Being, at Casa das Rosas
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brasil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition. Images of the Unconscious, at Paço Imperial
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brasil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition, at Fundação Bienal
Source: Itaú Cultural
