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The
writer remembers, dreams, invents - and later makes
of it literary material. With the artist, what he invents,
dreams, remembers has to have an objective existence
made of color, light and image. His imagination has
to have a formal dimension in space, and existence in
the concrete truth. Hence the difficulty of the poor
writer in giving an opinion on art. He has to rely on
emotional appreciation, on the impact the work of art
had on him, as the difficulties of the technique are
beyond his understanding.
I say all this faced with the painting of Manoel Costa.
In it is the beauty and mystery of the Amazon region.
The animals, the vast volumes of water, the jungle.
And above all, the people. The magical life of that
world and the people who inhabit it. Tall, copper-skinned
women preparing meals, handling utensils, taking care
of day-to-day chores. Men in boats, with animals, extracting
rubber, working the fruits of the land.
It is not academic realism, neither a prepared deformation,
with intellectual intentions.
It is the Amazon, the mysterious Amazon, seen through
the special and loving eyes of the painter.
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