Juraci Dórea Falcão (Feira de Santana BA 1944)
Juraci Dórea Falcão is a sculptor, painter, draftsman, photographer and graphic designer. He graduated in Architecture from the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) in 1968. In the 1980s, he began the Projeto Terra [Earth Project], devoted to creating large sculptures in leather and wood, as well as murals in the backlands of Bahia. During this period, he received the grant for Support to the Production of Visual Artists, offered by the Ivan Serpa/MEC/Funarte/Inap/Capes Competition, in Rio de Janeiro. In 1990, he carried out the Projeto Canudos [Canudos Project], at the Teatro Castro Alves and at the Açude de Cocorobó, in Salvador, in collaboration with Washington Falcão.
Critiques
"(...) Dórea's proposal is a different one (...) 'to make an art without urban references and show it in the very environment that inspired it, the sertão'. In other words, he means to place himself against the current of art history. Curiously, however, by acting this way, he has been solving, or at least situating, in the rural setting, questions that have long concerned the producers and ideologues of an essentially urban art. (...) By showing his pictures at street markets and on porches, hanging them on lines in the shade of 'leafy umbu trees, like unusual billboards among goats, scrawny oxen and xiquexique cacti', or painting his murals on old adobe or wattle-and-daub walls in some lost corner of the sertão, Juraci Dórea is making, in his own way, 'public art', putting into practice an old dream of museologists, the 'open-air museum', and he also takes part, in his own space, in the new muralist surge, today a worldwide phenomenon. And like the Mexicans in the past and the Chicanos today, he uses the mural to speak of things close to the reality surrounding local populations, their traditions, habits, myths and legends".
Frederico Morais
MORAIS, Frederico. A arte popular e sertaneja de Juraci Dórea: uma utopia?. Salvador, Cordel, 1987. (Documentos, 4).
"Here is the true land of cacti. Here is Juraci Dórea's sertão. The very one portrayed by Euclides: stage of the most absurd war in our history. Canudos, citadel of ragged warriors, today submerged under the waters of the Vaza-Barris, merely a blue landscape between small hills. There the artist drove in rough poles, covered them with a few half-hides of sole leather, tied them firmly and left them to time. They did not even bother the birds: there was nothing strange about them. The sertão was just that: rough poles, dry hides, abandonment. Here is Juraci Dórea's proposal. An art for no one, we might think. For a vernissage in such a hall, alongside living natures such as mandacarus, xiquexiques, cabeças-de-frade, gravatás and palmatórias, plus lizards, scorpions, jararacas, teiús and agoutis, seems addressed to no one. (...) Only in part. That purest part of an intention. What we would call the ideal. In reality, this proposal was taken to where people are: roadsides, yards, street markets. And the people - locals, country folk - made the most varied use of it, in keeping with their nature: they tied up animals, leaned on it for a chat, took it apart to make stirrup straps, or admired the artist's 'cleverness'".
Antônio Brasileiro
BRASILEIRO, Antônio. Juraci Dórea: o sertão de Juraci Dórea. In: Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, 19., 1987. Catálogo geral. p. 132.
"(...) At first, cowboys appeared in his oil paintings. Then he began working in leather, a series he called Estandartes do Jacuípe [Banners of the Jacuípe]. (...) His first sculptures were made near Feira de Santana, in the middle of the pasture, at a place called Tapera, outside the town. Then he began installing some in Monte Santo. Finally, with the Ivan Serpa grant from Funarte, Juraci was able to continue his work, making sculptures even in the Raso da Catarina. Alongside these leather sculptures, a parallel body of work began to develop from 1984. He began painting panels on the wattle-and-daub that forms the walls of the houses in the caatinga. He had already made some of these paintings on canvas, but they look like curious medieval friezes, recalling cordel drawings, yet at the same time they have their own identity - they are scenes with many characters, seen in profile, aligned with great rhythm and almost always treated with little color and much use of black and white".
Justino Marinho
MARINHO, Justino. Juraci Dórea: formas no sertão. Galeria: revista de arte, São Paulo: Area Editorial, n. 9, p. 88-90, 1988.
"Therein lies Juraci's originality. His art of the sertão stays in the sertão. Being both hunter and hunted. Being hunger and food. It is the character as his own narrator, with sertão and sertanejo integrated in this dialogue that goes beyond a mere aesthetic concept, even if the sertão becomes sea and these sculptures get a room at the Bienal Internacional de São Paulo and represent Brazil at the Venice Biennale. The aesthetic concept of the sertão - until when? - is still drought, poverty, misery, and this art, popular in its means and materials, conveys comfort, affirms the denunciation and speaks of the everyday material world of the sertanejo and the sertão of Bahia. Becoming a poetic object does not change the fact that leather is a livelihood and the poles, the sertanejo's rural landscape. Becoming a poetic object, leather and poles, only affirms: the sertão is never sea".
Claudius Portugal
PORTUGAL, Claudius. Juraci Dórea. Exu, Salvador: Fundação Casa de Jorge Amado, n. 33, 1993. Encarte.
"Just as no individual lives isolated and independent from the rest of the world, society is also ideally present in the artist's mind when he creates. By appropriating the whole imaginary of the Brazilian backlands, turning it into pure art and presenting it at street markets, on porches, in markets, or painting murals on wattle-and-daub and adobe walls, or else planting his sculpture-totems in remote, solitary places, Juraci Dórea makes a public, open art, with the direct intervention of man and of time itself (which acts by modifying his sculptures), perhaps fulfilling an inner project of his own: to occupy every space on earth (utopia?) to signal to humankind that art has a unifying role and that the work of art should be an instrument for peace and fraternity among peoples".
Eduardo Evangelista
EVANGELISTA, Eduardo. Juraci Dórea. In: DÓREA, Juraci. Juraci Dórea. n. p.
Solo Exhibitions
1962 - Feira de Santana BA - Solo, at Biblioteca Municipal Arnold Silva
1965 - Salvador BA - Solo, at Galeria Usis
1973 - Salvador BA - Solo, at Fundação do Patrimônio Artístico e Cultural da Bahia
1980 - Feira de Santana BA - Solo, at Museu Regional
1980 - Salvador BA - Solo, at MAM/BA
1984 - Feira de Santana BA - Solo, at Campo do Gado
1985 - Feira de Santana BA - Terra - Juraci Dórea, traveling exhibition sponsored by Desenbanco
1985 - Canudos BA - Terra - Juraci Dórea, traveling exhibition sponsored by Desenbanco
1985 - Raso da Catarina BA - Terra - Juraci Dórea, traveling exhibition sponsored by Desenbanco
1985 - Monte Santo BA - Terra - Juraci Dórea, traveling exhibition sponsored by Desenbanco
1996 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Solo, at Espaço Oikos
1999 - Paris (France) - Projet Terre
Group Exhibitions
1978 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st National Visual Arts Salon, at MNBA
1979 - São Paulo SP - 15th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1979 - São Paulo SP - Playful Sculpture Exhibition, at Masp - APCA Best Exhibition of the Year award
1979 - Vitória ES - 5 Bahian Artists, at Fundação Cultural do Espírito Santo
1980 - Curitiba PR - 37th Paraná Salon, at Teatro Guaíra
1980 - Salvador BA - Proposta 80, at MAM/BA
1981 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 4th National Visual Arts Salon, at MAM/RJ
1983 - Curitiba PR - 5th Brazilian Drawing Exhibition, at Teatro Guaíra
1983 - Feira de Santana BA - Four Days of Art, at Clube de C. Cajueiro
1983 - Recife PE - 36th Visual Arts Salon, at Museu do Estado de Pernambuco - acquisition prize and José Gomes Figueiredo Prize, for body of work
1983 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Artists from Bahia, at MAC/USP
1984 - Belo Horizonte MG - 16th National Art Salon, at MABH
1984 - Feira de Santana BA - Group show, at Campo do Gado
1984 - Fortaleza CE - 7th National Visual Arts Salon
1984 - Recife PE - 37th Visual Arts Salon - acquisition prize
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st Fotonordeste, at Funarte
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 7th National Visual Arts Salon, at MAM/RJ
1985 - Atami (Japan) - 7th Brazil-Japan Fine Arts Exhibition
1985 - Kyoto (Japan) - 7th Brazil-Japan Fine Arts Exhibition
1985 - Recife PE - 38th Visual Arts Salon
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 7th Brazil-Japan Fine Arts Exhibition, at Fundação Brasil-Japão
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Velha Mania: Brazilian Drawing, at EAV/Parque Lage
1985 - Santa Cruz BA - Group show - traveling
1985 - Santa Rosa BA - Group show - traveling
1985 - Pedra Vermelha BA - Group show - traveling
1985 - Acaru BA - Group show - traveling
1985 - Monte Santo BA - Group show - traveling
1985 - São Paulo SP - 3rd São Paulo Contemporary Art Salon, at Fundação Bienal
1985 - São Paulo SP - 7th Brazil-Japan Fine Arts Exhibition, at Fundação Brasil-Japão
1985 - Tokyo (Japan) - 7th Brazil-Japan Fine Arts Exhibition
1986 - Belo Horizonte MG - 18th National Art Salon, at Museu de Arte de Belo Horizonte
1986 - Camaçari BA - 1st Metanor/Copenor Visual Arts Salon of Bahia, at Metanor/Copenor
1986 - Curitiba PR - 43rd Paraná Salon - award winner
1986 - Curitiba PR - 7th Brazilian Drawing Exhibition, at MAC/PR
1986 - Fortaleza CE - 1st International Exhibition of Ephemeral Sculptures
1986 - Recife PE - 36th Visual Arts Salon
1986 - Salvador BA - Tropical Imaginary, at Escritório de Arte da Bahia
1987 - Feira de Santana BA - Octahedron, at Galeria Raimundo Oliveira
1987 - São Paulo SP - 19th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1988 - Salvador BA - 1st Bahia Visual Arts Salon, at MAM/BA
1988 - São Paulo SP - 15 Years of the Brazil-Japan Fine Arts Exhibition, at Fundação Mokiti Okada M.O.A.
1988 - Venice (Italy) - 43rd Venice Biennale
1989 - Havana (Cuba) - 3rd Havana Biennial
1990 - Salvador BA - Canudos, at Fiat
1991 - Brasília DF - Art - The Eternal Recycling, at Instituto Histórico e Geográfico do Distrito Federal
1991 - São Félix BA - 1st Recôncavo Biennial, at Centro Cultural Dannemann
1992 - Salvador BA - Religiosity in Contemporary Bahian Art, at Galeria Acbeu
1993 - Feira de Santana BA - Opening of the Espaço Cultural Banco do Brasil
1994 - Salvador BA - 1st MAM/BA Visual Arts Salon, at MAM/BA
1995 - Feira de Santana BA - Artists from Bahia, at Espaço Cultural Ponto do Livro
1996 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Painting and Sculpture from Northeast Brazil, at Espaço Oikos
1997 - Salvador BA - A Toast to Coffee, at Espaço Cafelier
1998 - Paris (France) - Bahia à Paris: arts plastiques d'aujourd'hui, at Galerie Debret
1998 - Salvador BA - Tropicália 30 Years: 40 Bahian Artists, at MAM/BA
1999 - Curitiba PR - Arte-Arte Salvador 450 Years, at Fundação Cultural de Curitiba. Solar do Barão
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Arte-Arte Salvador 450 Years, at Museu Histórico da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro
1999 - Salvador BA - 100 Visual Artists from Bahia, at Museu de Arte Sacra
1999 - Salvador BA - Arte-Arte Salvador 450 Years, at MAM/BA
Source: Itaú Cultural
