Estrigas (Fortaleza CE 1919 - idem 2014)
Art critic, painter and illustrator.
Nilo de Brito Firmeza adopted the nickname Estrigas in his student days at the Liceu do Ceará. A graduate in dentistry, he began frequenting the Sociedade Cearense de Artes Plásticas - SCAP in 1950, where he took his first painting and drawing courses, and became a member of its board in 1953. He practiced and taught dentistry for about 15 years and, in parallel, contributed texts on the visual arts to specialized magazines and major newspapers in Fortaleza. He also worked as an illustrator for prose and poetry publications by several authors from Ceará, such as Milton Dias, Otacílio Colares and Manuel Coelho Raposo. He took part in the Salão dos Novos [New Artists Salon] in 1952 and 1953 and, in 1954, won a silver medal when he first exhibited at the Salão de Abril [April Salon], in which he participated on several occasions throughout his career, until the 1990s. In 1969, he founded the Mini-Museu Firmeza, in Mandubim, on the small farm where he lived near the state capital. Two years later, he held an exhibition at the Museu de Arte da Universidade Federal do Ceará - Mauc, with his wife Nice Firmeza. He wrote the books Contribuição ao Reconhecimento de Raimundo Cela [Contribution to the Recognition of Raimundo Cela] and A Saga do Pintor Francisco Domingos da Silva [The Saga of the Painter Francisco Domingos da Silva], both in 1988; Arte: Aspectos Pré-Históricos no Ceará (Uma Contribuição ao Estudo das Artes Plásticas no Ceará) [Art: Prehistoric Aspects in Ceará (A Contribution to the Study of the Visual Arts in Ceará)], 1989; and Barrica: O Alquimista da Arte [Barrica: The Alchemist of Art], 1993. In 2007, the Universidade Federal do Ceará - UFC honored him with the Cultural Merit Medal in recognition of his contribution to culture and art, on which occasion Mauc held the exhibition Nice e Estrigas, Pinturas e Desenhos [Nice and Estrigas, Paintings and Drawings], bringing together some 50 works by the couple.
Critical Commentary
The activity of Nilo de Brito Firmeza, known as Estrigas, in the Ceará art scene began in the early 1950s at the Sociedade Cearense de Artes Plásticas - SCAP, where he was a student in the open courses, a board member and a promoter.
In the early 1940s, Estrigas met the artists Antonio Bandeira and Aldemir Martins at a lunch held in honor of the writer Antônio Girão Barroso, who was returning from a stay in Rio de Janeiro. The event brought together important names in Ceará literature who later founded the Grupo Clã. Estrigas, Antonio Bandeira and Aldemir Martins later took part in SCAP together. While leading the organization, Estrigas created the Escola de Belas Artes do Ceará, on the model of the one in Rio de Janeiro, a project interrupted after two years.
It was in this period and setting that he met the painter Nice Firmeza, whom he married. Together, they took part in several group exhibitions and, in 1969, set up the Mini-Museu Firmeza, housed in the couple's home. The collection presents an overview of the various expressions of Ceará art and consists of original paintings and sculptures as well as reproductions. It includes works by Raimundo Cela, Barrica, Mário Baratta, Aldemir Martins and several visual artists active in Fortaleza, as well as works by Estrigas and Nice themselves. The museum also holds books, catalogs and newspaper clippings.
A researcher of Ceará art, Estrigas published in 1969 the book Arte: Aspectos Pré-Históricos no Ceará, in which he discusses the prehistoric paintings in the caves of the Serra de Uruburetama, in Itapipoca, and utilitarian and decorative Indigenous art. In the book Fase Renovadora na Arte Cearense [The Renewal Phase in Ceará Art], published by the Universidade Federal do Ceará - UFC in 1983, he revisits the period when the state's first visual arts institutions were created and follows the repercussions of the transformations in the local cultural milieu in the press of the time. In 1988, he released two other publications, A Saga do Pintor Francisco Domingos da Silva and Contribuição ao Reconhecimento de Raimundo Cela. An admirer of Cela, Estrigas considered him the greatest artist from Ceará. In 1993, he published Barrica: o Alquimista da Arte, on the Ceará painter and ceramist Guilherme Clidenor de Moura Capibaribe, whom Estrigas considered one of the most prolific and original visual artists of Ceará. On the fiftieth anniversary of SCAP's founding, he published the book O Salão de Abril [The April Salon] in 1994.
His visual output consists of landscapes, urban scenes and works featuring cangaceiros [backlands bandits], couples, birds and other animals. As techniques, he frequently uses watercolor and drawing, as well as oil painting. In recent works, he also explores still life, emphasizing the formal properties of objects.
Collections
Centro de Artes Visuais da Casa Raimundo Cela - Fortaleza CE
Museu de Arte da Universidade Federal do Ceará - Fortaleza CE
Museu Jaguaribano - Aracati CE
Solo Exhibitions
1971 - Fortaleza CE - Solo, at MAUC
Group Exhibitions
1954 - Fortaleza CE - 10th April Salon
1956 - Fortaleza CE - April Salon, s.l.
1958 - Fortaleza CE - April Salon, s.l.
1959 - São Paulo SP - 8th São Paulo Salon of Modern Art, at Galeria Prestes Maia
1960 - Fortaleza CE - 1st Avant-Garde Art Show
1960 - São Paulo SP - 9th São Paulo Salon of Modern Art, at Galeria Prestes Maia
1961 - São Paulo SP - 10th São Paulo Salon of Modern Art, at Galeria Prestes Maia
1963 - Salvador BA - Oito Artistas do Ceará [Eight Artists from Ceará], at MAM/BA
1963 - Fortaleza CE - A Paisagem Cearense [The Ceará Landscape], at MAUC
1963 - Fortaleza CE - Oito Artistas [Eight Artists], s.l.
1976 - São Paulo SP - 8th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1990 - Fortaleza CE - 41st April Salon, at Centro de Artes Visuais Raimundo Cela
1991 - Fortaleza CE - Scap: 50 anos [Scap: 50 Years], at Imperial Othon Palace Hotel
1992 - Brasília DF - 43rd April Salon, at ECT Galeria de Arte
1992 - Fortaleza CE - 43rd April Salon, at Museu de Arte da UFC
1992 - Recife PE - 43rd April Salon, at Galeria Metropolitana de Arte
1992 - São Paulo SP - 43rd April Salon, at Casa das Rosas
1998 - Fortaleza CE - Jangada [Raft], at Museu do Ceará
1999 - Fortaleza CE - 50th April Salon, at Centro Cultural da Abolição
2003 - São Paulo SP - A Arte Atrás da Arte: onde ficam e como viajam as obras de arte [The Art Behind the Art: Where Artworks Are Kept and How They Travel], at MAM/SP
Source: Itaú Cultural
