Sérgio Vieira Cardoso (Manaus AM 1954)
Painter, playwright.
Self-taught, he began painting in the 1970s. His work is marked by social denunciation. Deeply influenced by his home region, he denounces the destruction of nature. A law graduate, he did postgraduate studies in cultural project management in Rio de Janeiro in 1979. That year, he exhibited in the show Artistas Amazonenses [Amazonas Artists] at the Paço das Artes in São Paulo. In 1981, he lived in Caracas, Venezuela, where he did a doctorate in cultural services management at the Latin American and Caribbean Center for Cultural Development. Back in Manaus, in addition to taking part in exhibitions and shows, he worked as coordinator of cultural affairs at the Amazonas State Department of Education and Culture from 1981 to 1991. He also worked as superintendent director of the Amazonas Educational Television in 1987 and as the state's cultural superintendent between 1990 and 1991. He is linked to the group of Amazonas artists that emerged in the 1980s. He took part in the exhibitions Artistas Contemporâneos do Amazonas [Contemporary Artists from Amazonas] at the Museu de Arte Brasileira - MAB/Faap, São Paulo, and Verde Contemporâneo [Contemporary Green] at the Solar Grandjean de Montigny, Rio de Janeiro, both in 1989.
Critiques
"A walk through the hell of lovelessness along the assembly lines of the free zone. That is where Sérgio takes us through his paintings, steeped in torment, revolt and social denunciation. His imagination and fantasy bring together our fragmentary world in large puzzles. There is a sum of past and present experiences. With humor and sensuality, he shows the cruel human Destructions & Situations that spreads what we are being led to".
Rita Loureiro
LOUREIRO, Rita. In: GALERIA RODRIGO M. F. DE ANDRADE. Morte no Amazônia Ars Saloon: catálogo, Rio de Janeiro, 1983.
"The Amazonian exuberance and restlessness are reflected in the aerial views of the landscape architecture in Sérgio Vieira Cardoso's works, confirming the definition of Art as a special relationship between man and environment. Space, light, color and matter form the common denominator of this artist from Manaus, whose quixotic struggle perhaps does not present an Amazon as he dreams of it, but as economic power determines it. (...) Sérgio Vieira Cardoso's art leads us to the silence of the jungle, free of predatory human civilization".
Walter Dominguez
LUNAMATA de Sérgio Vieira Cardoso. Apresentação de Paulo Herkenhoff. Texto de Walter Dominguez e Sérgio Vieira Cardoso. São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado - Galeria Papel do Papel, 1989.
"There are groups of artists in the Amazon, above all in Manaus and Belém, who seek to find in the region itself the meaning of their production, which should not be confused with the idea of an art that is hermetic in its self-reference. For some, it is a production developed from the intention of popular visual heritage, as an anthropological bias (Emanuel Nassar, Otoni Mesquita, Luis Braga, Margalho and Hélio Melo). At other moments, there is a search for a visual interpretation of other phenomenological aspects of the Amazon, its spatiality, its time and its natural conditions (as in Jair Jacqmont, and at certain moments Osmar Pinheiro and Jader Rezende). It is within this framework that Sérgio Vieira Cardoso's production is inscribed, as a passage between the two tendencies and fields of questions: spatiality - map - color - earth - water - vegetation, visual games and rhythms - the arrangement of timber logs for transport along the river".
Paulo Herkenhoff
LUNAMATA de Sérgio Vieira Cardoso. Apresentação de Paulo Herkenhoff. Texto de Walter Dominguez e Sérgio Vieira Cardoso. São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado - Galeria Papel do Papel, 1989.
Testimonials
"Images from a film I have already seen and always see, in the place where I live; even so, I think that at the start of the show the captions should be superimposed: 'This is really a make-believe work.'
An exhibition about an exhibition.
Essential visions of a strange Amazonian cultural act.
An exhibition against the death of art and of artists.
My tension, my anguish.
My hope that one day I will be recognized as an artist who contributes to the gross artistic cultural product of this country, like people of my folk and Amazonian land.
God help me to be original, in this global version of a pictorial melodrama, in which fertile multi-existential oars break, tearing through the rivers and the veins of my almost cultural being.
I think these are impressions of an artist who knows that the paint and the base are not quite these, they are others, made of the most intimate nature of my people, but the images are..."
Sérgio Vieira Cardoso
CARDOSO, Sérgio Vieira. In: GALERIA RODRIGO M. F. DE ANDRADE. Morte no Amazônia Ars Saloon: catálogo, Rio de Janeiro, 1983.
Solo Exhibitions
1977 - Manaus AM - Solo, at Teatro Amazonas
1977 - Manaus AM - Manaós Compartimentis, at Teatro Amazonas
1979 - Manaus AM - Os Artistas [The Artists], at Teatro Amazonas
1979 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Mapas Compartimentis, at Livraria Noa Noa
1983 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Morte no Amazônia Ars Saloon [Death in the Amazon Ars Saloon], at Galeria Rodrigo de Melo Franco de Andrade/Funarte
1987 - Manaus AM - A Simples Passagem do Rio [The Simple Passage of the River], at Galeria Afrânio de Castro
1989 - Manaus AM - Cultistories, at Galeria de Arte do Espaço Cultural
1989 - São Paulo SP - Lunamata, at Pinacoteca do Estado - Galeria Papel do Papel
1989 - Manaus AM - Lunamata, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1991 - Manaus AM - Planos e Plenas Paisagens [Planes and Full Landscapes], at Pinacoteca do Estado
1994 - Manaus AM - Mapas y otras queridas pinturas [Maps and Other Beloved Paintings], at Sala Cláudio Santoro Amazonas Shopping
1994 - Manaus AM - Cinema de caixa e papel [Box and Paper Cinema], at Centro de Artes da Universidade do Amazonas
1994 - Manaus AM - Composições [Compositions], at Centro de Artes Chaminé
1995 - Manaus AM - Os sapatos do Cavaleiro da Lua [The Moon Knight's Shoes], at Centro de Artes Chaminé
1997 - Manaus AM - Sinaes y Seguimentos [Signs and Sequences], at Centro de Artes Chaminé
2000 - Manaus AM - Krônicas [Chronicles], at Centro Cultural Palácio do Rio Negro
2000 - Manaus AM - Asas/Florestas de Bizâncio [Wings/Forests of Byzantium], at Galeria de Arte do Instituto Cultural Brasil-Estados Unidos
2005 - Manaus AM - Cartas do Rio Negro [Letters from the Rio Negro], at Galeria de Arte ICBEU
2005 - Manaus AM - CINEMAMEU, at Galeria do Largo de São Sebastião
2008 - Manaus AM - Quatro Tempos [Four Times], at Galeria do ICBEU
Group Exhibitions
1975 - Manaus AM - Expo-Eucarístico, at Fundação Cultural do Amazonas - Expo-Eucarístico Prize
1979 - São Paulo SP - Artistas Amazonenses [Amazonas Artists], at Paço das Artes
1981 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 4º Salão Nacional de Artes Plásticas [4th National Visual Arts Salon], at MAM/RJ
1982 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 5º Salão Nacional de Artes Plásticas [5th National Visual Arts Salon], at MAM/RJ
1982 - Belo Horizonte MG - 14º Salão Nacional de Arte [14th National Art Salon], at MAP
1982 - Belém PA - Coletiva de Amazonenses [Amazonas Artists Group Show], at Teatro da Paz
1983 - São Paulo SP - Feira de Arte Brasileira [Brazilian Art Fair], at Fundação Bienal
1983 - Recife PE - Artistas Amazonenses [Amazonas Artists], at Galeria Massangana
1983 - Brasília DF - Coletiva de Amazonenses [Amazonas Artists Group Show], at Memorial JK
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 7º Salão Nacional de Artes Plásticas [7th National Visual Arts Salon], at MAM/RJ
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 8º Salão Nacional de Artes Plásticas [8th National Visual Arts Salon], at MAM/RJ - domestic travel prize
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Caligrafias e Escrituras [Calligraphies and Writings], at Funarte
1985 - São Paulo SP - 3º Salão Paulista de Arte Contemporânea [3rd São Paulo Contemporary Art Salon], at Fundação Bienal
1986 - Belém PA - 9º Salão Nacional de Artes Plásticas [9th National Visual Arts Salon], at Museu de Arte da Universidade do Pará
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Mostra Grandes Prêmios do 8º Salão Nacional de Artes Plásticas [Grand Prizes Exhibition of the 8th National Visual Arts Salon], at Funarte
1987 - Belém PA - Cartas da Amazônia [Letters from the Amazon], at Galeria Elf
1987 - Manaus AM - Casas e artistas [Houses and Artists], at Galeria Afrânio de Castro
1988 - Belém PA - 7º Arte Pará [7th Arte Pará], at Fundação Rômulo Maiorana - acquisition prize
1989 - São Paulo SP - Artistas Contemporâneos do Amazonas [Contemporary Artists from Amazonas], at MAB/Faap
1989 - São Paulo SP - Pintores [Painters], at Pinacoteca do Estado
1989 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Verde Contemporâneo [Contemporary Green], at Solar Grandjean de Montigny
1990 - Manaus AM - Coletiva de Artistas do Amazonas [Amazonas Artists Group Show], at Pinacoteca do Estado
1991 - Manaus AM - 10º Zonarte, at SESC Manaus
1992 - Manaus AM - Mostra de Abertura do Centro de Artes Chaminé [Opening Exhibition of the Centro de Artes Chaminé], at SESC Manaus
1993 - Manaus AM - Group show, at Centro de Artes Chaminé
1996 - Manaus AM - Group show, at Amazonas Shopping
1996 - Manaus AM - Group show, at Sesc
2000 - Campinas SP - Rumos Itaú Cultural Artes Visuais. O Olhar em Movimento [Rumos Itaú Cultural Visual Arts. The Gaze in Motion], at Itaú Cultural
2001 - Brasília DF - Rumos Itaú Cultural Artes Visuais. O Olhar em Movimento [Rumos Itaú Cultural Visual Arts. The Gaze in Motion], at Galeria Itaú Cultural
2005 - Manaus AM - Cartas do Rio Negro [Letters from the Rio Negro], at Galeria de Arte do Instituto Cultural Brasil
2008 - Belém PA - Mostra Final do 26º Arte Pará Fundação Rômulo Maiorana [Final Exhibition of the 26th Arte Pará Fundação Rômulo Maiorana], at Museu Histórico do Estado do Pará
Source: Itaú Cultural
