Miguel Bakun (Marechal Mallet PR 1909 - Curitiba PR 1963)
Painter and draftsman.
He is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern art in Paraná. The son of Slavic immigrants, he enters the Navy Apprentices School in Paranaguá in 1926. Transferred to the Escola de Grumetes [Cabin Boys' School] in Rio de Janeiro in 1928, he meets the sailor and artist José Pancetti, who encourages him to draw. In 1930 he is discharged from the Navy and returns to Curitiba, where he works as a street photographer and, despite having no formal training, devotes himself to painting. To support himself, he produces advertisements, signs and interior decorations. He later meets the painters Guido Viaro and João Baptista Groff. In search of a more favorable cultural environment, he returns to Rio de Janeiro in 1939, where he meets José Pancetti again. However, faced with the difficulty of establishing himself as a painter, he returns to Curitiba for good at the beginning of 1940. He sets up a studio in a building that the city government lends to several artists, where he works alongside the painters Alcy Xavier, Loio-Pérsio, Marcel Leite and Nilo Previdi. The 1950s are the artist's most productive decade: he devotes himself to portraits, still lifes, seascapes and, above all, landscape painting. From 1960 he produces works on religious themes. At that time, abstraction predominates in the city's few exhibitions, sidelining figurative artists. Miguel Bakun feels this process keenly and suffers from his precarious financial situation. During this period, he receives medical treatment for severe depression. In early 1963, at the age of 54, the artist takes his own life in his studio.
Critical Commentary
With a painting of Post-Impressionist and Expressionist accents, Miguel Bakun is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern art in Paraná. The son of Slavic immigrants, he enters the Navy Apprentices School in Paranaguá in 1926. In 1928 he is transferred to the Escola de Grumetes in Rio de Janeiro, where he meets the young sailor and still unknown artist José Pancetti (1902 - 1958). Encouraged by his friend, he begins to draw, following a childhood inclination. He makes drawings during the various periods when he has to rest because of accidents. In 1930 he is discharged from the Navy for physical disability, following a fall from the ship's mast. He moves to Curitiba, where he works as a street photographer. He soon meets the painters Guido Viaro (1897 - 1971) and João Baptista Groff (1897 - 1970), who encourage him to paint. Self-taught, he devotes himself professionally to painting until the end of his life.
In search of a more favorable cultural environment, he returns to Rio de Janeiro in 1939. He meets Pancetti again and paints a series of landscapes of the city, mainly on the Santa Teresa hill. However, faced with the difficulty of establishing himself as a painter, he returns to Curitiba for good at the beginning of 1940. He sets up a studio in a building lent by the city government and begins to associate with other artists opposed to academicism, such as Alcy Xavier (1933), Loio-Pérsio (1927), Marcel Leite and Nilo Previdi (1913 - 1982). This contact allows Bakun to learn the formal values of painting. The surprising emotional power of his paintings overcomes the shortcomings of his training, and he is soon noticed by critics. In a 1948 text, written after a visit to the city, the critic Sérgio Milliet (1898 - 1966) points to Bakun's Van Gogh-like spirit, noting that he lacks a sense of the canvas as a whole and uses excessive impasto. Nevertheless, he concludes his review by saying: "the painter's enthusiasm, his intense involvement in the work, make even his defects endearing".
From then on, the comparison with the Dutch artist becomes recurrent, both regarding Bakun's painting and his melancholy, depressive temperament. The artist himself accepts it, acknowledging his admiration for Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890), whose paintings he knew from reproductions or in person. Another point of similarity between the two is a certain mystical religiosity in conflict with a feeling of deep loneliness, which manifests itself in their works in different ways and with different intensity.
The 1950s are Bakun's most productive decade; he devotes himself to portraits, still lifes and seascapes but, above all, to landscape painting, whose most recurrent subject is the outskirts of Curitiba, with their woods, simple houses and the intimacy of backyards. It is in this last genre that he achieves his best artistic results. His unfamiliarity with the canonical rules of perspective for constructing pictorial space leads the artist to invent his own solutions in a practical, intuitive way. The creation of a space almost without depth or vanishing points, built through the physical body of the paint, sets his landscapes apart.
Although he uses pencil sketches on the canvas or on paper, drawing does not appear in his paintings. Forms are created through the handling of the pictorial matter itself. His palette is restricted to shades of blue, green and white, sometimes orange and red, and his favorite color, yellow. The variation between dense areas and thin ones, at times reaching the absence of paint, creates the rhythmic spatial structure of his works. The settings, generally familiar and everyday - trees at the back of the yard, fences, worn wooden doors of simple houses, roadsides, woods - take on an air of mystery.
Miguel Bakun's pantheistic mysticism leads him to a deep bond with nature. For him, God is present in all living things, animal or plant, and colors can reveal this sacred component. In this sense, reservations must be made about critics who see a purely Expressionist bent in his works. While his singular gaze expresses itself freely, his respect for nature does not draw him away from the desire to represent reality. What we see is an interweaving of artist and landscape, in which man and nature are permeable to each other. This is revealed in the sense of spatial closeness his canvases convey.
In the late 1950s the artist introduces strange creatures into his paintings, in an animistic vision of nature, although some critics mistakenly see a Surrealist influence in his work. In the early 1960s he produces works on religious themes. He feels sidelined by the arrival of abstraction, which begins to dominate the few exhibitions in Curitiba. His financial situation also becomes increasingly precarious. These factors contribute to the worsening of his depression, and he clings to religion as never before. In February 1963 he takes his own life in his studio.
Critiques
"Oscar Wilde said that nature is the creation of art. (...) Miguel Bakun was an artist who belonged to no movement. His art flowed naturally, though not without apparent suffering. Miguel Bakun's doubts, his inquiries, his mysticism had to do with his art only because they belonged to the same person. There is no doubt that, within Oscar Wilde's concept, Miguel Bakun is a rich example of nature being his creation. It was his way of doing things, and not because he consciously or culturally wished to carry it out that way. Or rather, it was not a program. It was a way of interpreting the world through the angles of his own expression. One should therefore look for mysticism and anguish not in the work, but in the man. This anguish, however, also had its simpler side. Much of it derived from a thirst for knowledge. Perhaps if the answers had been more convincing, or if he had been given work and encouragement matching the answers he hoped to obtain, the tragic outcome would not have happened. For there was in Miguel Bakun no expectation of futility, no self-discouragement. Everything Miguel Bakun did derived from a decisive deliberation, in his art and in his life. The doubts that assailed him and the anguish he carried were not such as to prevent him from carrying out what lay within his deliberation. That is why his art is a strong, energetic painting. At the same time lyrical. Bakun loved life, so much so that it was the center of his attention. His final act demonstrates this circumstance."
Eduardo Rocha Virmond
VIRMOND, Eduardo Rocha. [Texto]. In: BAKUN, Miguel. Miguel Bakun, 25 anos depois. Curitiba: Sala Miguel Bakun/Secretaria de Estado da Cultura, 1989. p. 8.
"Surprised at the quality of the prints by painters still inexperienced in oil or watercolor, I heard from Viaro this moving statement: 'printmaking comes from within'. In it, longings and emotions are expressed whose purity is not diverted by the sensuality of color, nor by the demands of the objective world. The lack of a market for ordinary canvases and the absence of criticism may explain the relative insignificance of painting as such. Bakun has qualities; he is, however, a Van Gogh-like temperament. He is an impulsive painter who lacks a sense of the canvas as a whole and overuses warm colors without any counterweight. On the other hand, he is still bound to a dangerous conception of matter. The excessive impasto muddles the values and dulls the clarity of the color. The painter's enthusiasm, his intense involvement in the work, make even his defects endearing."
Sérgio Milliet
MILLIET, Sérgio. Artistas do Paraná. In: PROLIK, Eliane. A Natureza do destino: Miguel Bakun. 2000. 59 f. Trabalho de conclusão de curso (Especialização - História da Arte)-Escola de Música e Belas Artes do Paraná, Curitiba, 2000. p. 47. [Texto publicado originalmente no jornal O Estado de São Paulo, fevereiro de 1948]
"In developing his landscapes, some images were first made on a small scale and later enlarged and reworked with greater refinement and detail. On the whole, however, Bakun's output takes on the quality of small scale, drawing on intimacy, delicacy and the possibility of discourse that arises from it - a circumscribed surface that makes us look into and over the canvas. An art whose space suggests a certain shyness and, at the same time, an awareness of the possibilities and limits of its medium, untroubled by the monumentality and officialdom, or the slackness, that some near-mural paintings display with their illustrative brushstrokes. This scale of visuality and action chosen by the artist allows the formulation of an enriching, problematized and unstable whole that fits within the handling of his hands, making the time of its execution a single, whole impulse, without pauses or resumptions of the painting. The non-vibrant character of the light, the non-transparent matter and the non-fluid, non-extensive spatiality offer us a narrow, tight and slippery passage. The artist sets out to build the thickness of the world, and the small format presents us with the condensation of that energy."
Eliane Prolik
PROLIK, Eliane. Pequena dimensão - espessamento da pintura. In: ______. A Natureza do destino: Miguel Bakun. 2000. 59 f. Trabalho de conclusão de curso (Especialização - História da Arte)-Escola de Música e Belas Artes do Paraná, Curitiba, 2000. p. 20.
Solo Exhibitions
1946 - Marechal Mallet PR - Solo, at Salão da Prefeitura
1949 - Curitiba PR - Solo, at Teatro Guaíra
1957 - Curitiba PR - Solo, at the exhibition room of Biblioteca Pública do Paraná
Group Exhibitions
1944 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Exposição de Arte Paranaense [Paraná Art Exhibition]
1946 - Curitiba PR - 3rd Paraná Fine Arts Salon
1947 - Curitiba PR - 4th Paraná Fine Arts Salon, at Edifício do Orfeão da Escola Normal de Curitiba - gold medal
1947 - Paraná - Exhibits at Clube Concórdia - gold medal
1948 - Curitiba PR - 5th Paraná Fine Arts Salon, at Escola de Música e Belas Artes do Paraná - honorable mention
1948 - Paranaguá PR - Arte do Paraná [Art of Paraná], at Clube Literário
1949 - Curitiba PR - 6th Paraná Fine Arts Salon, at Instituto de Educação do Paraná Professor Erasmo Pilotto - bronze medal
1950 - Curitiba PR - 7th Paraná Fine Arts Salon, at Instituto de Educação do Paraná Professor Erasmo Pilotto - silver medal
1951 - Curitiba PR - 8th Paraná Fine Arts Salon, at Departamento de Cultura - Sala de Exposições
1952 - Curitiba PR - Mostra Permanente de Artistas Paranaenses [Permanent Show of Paraná Artists]
1953 - Paraná - Centenário da Emancipação Política do Paraná [Centenary of the Political Emancipation of Paraná]
1953 - Paraná - 6th Spring Fine Arts Salon - bronze medal
1956 - Curitiba PR - 12th Paraná Salon
1956 - n.p. - 9th Spring Salon of Clube Concórdia
1957 - São Paulo SP - Pintores do Paraná [Painters from Paraná], at Masp
1958 - Curitiba PR - 6 Pintores do Paraná [6 Painters from Paraná], at Galeria Cocaco
1959 - Curitiba PR - 16th Paraná Salon
1959 - n.p. - 11th Spring Salon of Clube Concórdia
1960 - Curitiba PR - 12th Spring Salon - acquisition prize
1960 - Curitiba PR - 1st Curitiba Annual Salon - honorable mention
1960 - Curitiba PR - 17th Paraná Salon
1961 - Curitiba PR - 13th Spring Salon - silver medal
1961 - Curitiba PR - 2nd Curitiba Annual Salon
1961 - Curitiba PR - 18th Paraná Salon
1962 - Curitiba PR - Salão do Paraná [Paraná Salon], at Biblioteca Pública do Paraná - gold medal
Posthumous Exhibitions
1963 - Curitiba PR - 20th Paraná Fine Arts Salon. Special Room, at Biblioteca Pública do Paraná
1974 - Curitiba PR - Retrospectiva Miguel Bakun [Miguel Bakun Retrospective], at Salão de Exposições do BADEP
1978 - Curitiba PR - Tributo a Bakun [Tribute to Bakun], at Clube Curitibano
1980 - Curitiba PR - Miguel Bakun: retrospectiva [Miguel Bakun: Retrospective], at Sala Miguel Bakun
1984 - São Paulo SP - Tradition and Rupture: A Synthesis of Brazilian Art and Culture, at Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
1985 - São Paulo SP - 18th São Paulo International Biennial, at Fundação Bienal
1986 - Curitiba PR - Tradition/Contradiction, at MAC/PR
1987 - Curitiba PR - Obras Inéditas [Unseen Works], at Studio R. Krieger
1989 - Curitiba PR - Miguel Bakun, 25 Anos Depois [Miguel Bakun, 25 Years Later], at Secretaria de Estado da Cultura
1991 - Curitiba PR - Museu Municipal de Arte: acervo [Municipal Art Museum: Collection], at Museu Municipal de Arte
1994 - São Paulo SP - Bienal Brasil Século XX, at Fundação Bienal
1997 - Curitiba PR - A Arte Contemporânea da Gravura [Contemporary Printmaking], at Museu Metropolitano de Arte de Curitiba
1998 - Curitiba PR - Arte Paranaense: movimento de renovação [Paraná Art: Renewal Movement], at Conjunto Cultural da Caixa
2004 - Curitiba PR - A Paisagem Paranaense e seus Pintores [The Paraná Landscape and Its Painters], at Casa Andrade Muricy
Source: Itaú Cultural
