Harry Elsas (Stuttgart, Alemanha 1925 - Taubaté SP 1994)
Harry Elsas was a muralist, printmaker and painter. He began his artistic career self-taught. He lived in Brazil from 1936 and was strongly influenced by the regional culture of the Northeast. In 1945, he received guidance from Lasar Segall and held his first solo show at the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC), in Rio de Janeiro. From 1970 he settled in São Paulo, where he painted murals for Banco Safra, in 1971, and for Banco Cidade de São Paulo, in 1976.
Critiques
"There is certainly a language behind Harry Elsas's own language. It is not exhausted by its first visual impression - which is, in fact, one of the essential conditions of art. This concealment, the reality within reality, the ability to present the visible world and to make visible the unperceived world, is what gives these images their psychological depth. Some elements are entirely perceptible: the extraordinary pictorial quality, the luminosity of his colors, the surprising luminosity of these unusual colors, the use of a primitive chromaticism, the resemblance to the Flemish Primitives. The hieratic composition of the figures, their exact placement on the canvas, the rigor of their layout. This recalls the Renaissance. The drama of his characters, their immersion in misery and injustice, their decrepitude - all this links his work to Expressionism. These are the great qualities and hallmarks of this painting: the Flemish Primitive, the human centrality of the Renaissance, the Expressionist tragedy, the clean drawing, the luminosity of the colors, the overall quality of his craft. And the second hallmark: the underlying message, the language hidden behind the apparent language, what lies behind the first visual impression. It is the artist's ability to turn his characters and his scenes into symbols of the human tragedy."
Jacob Klintowitz
HARRY Elsas: óleos sobre tela. Apresentação de Jacob Klintowitz. São Paulo: Galeria Grossman, 1982.
"His art always seeks to reconcile popular subject matter with a refined way of representing it. This refinement lies in the subtlety of the colors and the balance of the compositions. In his painting, Harry Elsas does not shy away from the grotesque or the tragicomic to reveal the daily life of humble people in their atmosphere of almost distressing poverty. The realism of the images - which he combines with an Expressionist mood - is always placed at the service of migrants from the drought-stricken Northeast, clowns from sad circuses, old men with wrinkled, aggressive faces deformed by time and misery. (...) His meticulous drawing builds up the relief of the figures, accentuating the details of their unusual ugliness. Elsas seeks to transform ugliness into an expression of moral beauty. His 'métier' was perfected through the constant study of compositions that geometrize surfaces and contain colors, limiting their tonal values. And these subdued colors shine in yellows and reds that light up the canvases."
Flávio de Aquino
HARRY Elsas: óleos sobre tela. Apresentação de Jacob Klintowitz. São Paulo: Galeria Grossman, 1982.
Collections
Acervo Banco Itaú S.A. (São Paulo, SP)
Acervo Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo/Brasil (São Paulo, SP)
Solo Exhibitions
1945 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at MEC
1955 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at MAM/SP
1962 - New York (United States) - Solo, at Columbia Broadcasting System
1964 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Copacabana Palace
1967 - New York (United States) - Solo, at Chelsea Art Galleries
1967 - São Paulo SP - Harry Elsas, at Galeria Astréia
1970 - New York (United States) - Solo, at House Gallery
1971 - Chicago (United States) - Solo, at Continental Bank
1972 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Chelsea Galeria de Arte
1982 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria Grossman
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Harry Elsas, at Copacabana Palace
1993 - São Paulo SP - Harry Elsas, at Galeria Pró Arte
Posthumous Exhibitions
2001 - São Paulo SP - Figuras e Faces [Figures and Faces], at A Galeria
Source: Itaú Cultural
