Tatti Moreno (Salvador 1944)
Octávio de Castro Moreno Filho, better known as Tatti Moreno, was born in Salvador on December 18, 1944.
His family is close to the arts. His mother and sister are painters, pianists and poets, and his brother is a drummer who has played with artists such as Caetano Veloso, Maria Bethânia and Gilberto Gil.
Tatti Moreno's artistic vocation emerged at the age of twelve or thirteen, when, still a boy, he worked with scrap metal and wire figures. He began by creating symbols and images of the Afro-Brazilian religion. He then entered the Escola de Belas Artes of the Universidade Federal da Bahia, where he studied with Mário Cravo Júnior and other Bahian artists. The next step was working in brass, stainless steel and aluminum.
Tatti Moreno's creations are modeled in clay and transferred to plaster and wood. They are cast in polyester resin, assembled and coated with varnish and resin. They are heavy sculptures: some, such as Oxalá, Xangô, Ogum, Ede, Iemanjá, Iansã, Nanã and Oxum, weigh up to a ton. Transporting them to exhibition venues is very laborious and sometimes takes several days. The small pieces, 15 to 90 centimeters high, are made of brass.
"Tatti Moreno," says Klintowitz, "is an erudite artist who uses popular culture as a source. His series of sculptures on the theme of the "Orixás" is a technological saga, in which he had to solve complex problems of casting and adaptation to unconventional materials, calculations of weight, volume and flotation systems, as well as the logistics of transport, which required trucks up to 20 meters long.
His orixás are famous. "Oxalá, in religious syncretism," he says, "corresponds to the Catholic Senhor do Bonfim - he is the strongest of the orixás, representing purity and dignity. White is his color".
His saints and orixás have been applauded in France, the United States, Portugal and the Netherlands and are spread across Brazil: in the Jardim dos Namorados and the Dique do Tororó in Salvador; at the Porto Seguro Convention Center; on Lake Paranoá in Brasília; and at the Tucuruvi station of the São Paulo Metro. The floating Orixá sculptures on the Dique do Tororó in Salvador are a postcard image of the Bahian capital and represent three years of intense work by a team of 14 people, including modelers, carpenters and other craftsmen.
"I receive a lot of encouragement, which I can symbolize in the person of Heitor Reis of the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia," he says. "I believe, however, that sculpture could have greater support if the format of the awards changed to the publication of books instead of travel tickets. What remains of the work is written history!" And further: "Art is the state of sublime creation, where man has contact with God. It is culture; it is part of the evolutionary process".
Tatti Moreno is currently creating 12 bronze totems two meters high, representing images of Brazilian popular culture, for a traveling exhibition that is to tour several of the country's capitals.
Sources:
1) Cláudio Júnior - Tati Moreno (available at http://claudiojjr.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/vidas-e-obras-de-tati-moreno-sante-scaldaferri-e-eliana-kertezs/
2) Bahia By- (available at http://www.michellemarie.com.br/interviews/108-tati-moreno)
3) Blog Demais (available at http://oliveiradimas.blogspot.com.br/2012/12/tatti-moreno-faz-escultura-em-homenagem.html)
