Zara Arshad, Alessandro Rolandi & Bruno Porto_ photo by Caue Ferraz

At the opening of the poster exhibition “Discover the Brazilian Cinema” presented at the 2nd Brazil Film Festival in Beijing, its co-curator Bruno Porto was joined by British designer Zara Arshad and Italian multimedia artist Alessandro Rolandi in an panel to address the relation between moving and still images: movies and its posters. The trio discussed aspects of contemporary marketing and promoting techniques – in which target audiences may only see a poster when they reach the theater, long after they’ve watched the trailer and read about it online – that subvert the original role of the poster, changes in technology that liberate the poster from paper, as well as its collectible aspects, and some of the “style formulas” specific genres use.

The debate and the exhibition were some of the parallel events of the 2nd Brazilian Film Fest in China, that took place at the Broadway Cinematheque MOMA in Beijing from November 17-22. It also featured a concert by musician, actor and soundtrack composer André Abujamra and a Q&A session with André Klotzel, director of Reflections of a Blender, the movie that won the festival Judge’s Choice Award. The international jury was composed by directors Xie Fei, Liu Jiayin, Sam Voutas and Vicky Mohieddeen & movie critic Raymond Zhou.

Descubra o Cinema Brasileiro poster exhibition_

Curated by graphic designers Billy Bacon and Bruno Porto, “Discover the Brazilian Cinema” features works by 30 graphic artists from diverse backgrounds, generations and parts of Brazil that encourage – through curiosity, beauty and witty visual solutions – the Chinese audience to enjoy Brazilian films. The show had been presented before at the 10th Shanghai International Film Festival in 2007 and the Pernambuco Design Salon in 2008. It was also selected for the 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial, that traveled to Mexico and China in 2009.

Broadway Cinematheque MOMA_ Beijing

Posters by André Stolarski, Batman Zavareze, Billy Bacon, Bruno Porto, Claudio Reston ‘Haroldinho’, Daniel Bueno, Eduardo Denne, Felipe Muanis, Manifesto (Guto Lins / Adriana Lins / Fernando Arruda), Itamar Medeiros, Kako, José Bessa ‘Elesbão’, Leonardo Buggy, Leonardo Eyer, Lilian Granado, Marcello Rosauro, Marcelo Martinez, Marck Al, Mariana Ochs, Orlando Pedroso, Rafael Ferreira, Rafo Castro, Renato Faccini, Ricardo Cunha Lima, Ruth Klotzel, Walter Vasconcelos, Yomar Augusto and Ziraldo.

Broadway Cinematheque MOMA_

Read Also:

• Discover the Brazilian Cinema
• Felipe Taborda’s “Kabum! Mix” poster exhibition in Warsaw featured on Wallpaper.com
• Brazilian illustration festival in China
• Brazilian posters win 1st prize in Bolivia
• Brazilian posters for the Green Movement in Iran

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In an attempt to spark the familiar flame of innovation, you find yourself Googling keywords like “cool artwork” or “inspiring designs”. Sadly, these desperate attempts to revive your creative juices yield regurgitated and over-promoted results that fall just short of your expectations.

If you find yourself desperately trying to get past that creative road block, look no further: among their many readers suggestions, The Next Web (TNW) picked We Heart it as one of their favorites:

We Heart It allows its community to browse through a constantly updated photo gallery where users can “heart” the images that they discover through the service and add them to a list of bookmarked favorites.There are over 10 million images on We Heart It. You can search for your favorite topics and heart the images you like the most. Just move your mouse over the image and click on the heart icon. When it fills up, you hearted it!We Heart It is definitely a site popular among Tumblr users with an interest specifically in style or fashion illustration. I have, on more than one occasion, seen images pirated directly from We Heart It with sources uncredited. While this is obviously just bad practice, it is also a testament to how popular and inspirational images on We Heart It can be. In fact, it is nearly impossible for me to scroll through Tumblr without recognizing some sort of beautiful photo or shot from this service.

via The best places to find artistic inspiration online – TNW Apps.

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• Brazil featured on Advertising Age’s “The Best of Latin American Marketing in 2009″

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Gilvan Samico, "Criação - Homem e Mulher", 1993

Gilvan José Meira Lins Samico (Recife, Pernambuco, 1928- ). Engraver, painter, draughtsman, lecturer. In 1952, together with other artists, Gilvan Samico founded the Ateliê Coletivo [Collective Studio] of the Sociedade de Arte Moderna do Recife – SAMR [Recife Modern Art Society], conceived by Abelardo da Hora (1924).

Gilvan studied wood engraving with Lívio Abramo (1903 – 1992) in 1957 at the Escola de Artesanato [School of Crafts] of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo – MAM/SP [São Paulo Museum of Modern Art]. In the following year, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he studied engraving with Oswaldo Goeldi (1895 – 1961) at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes – Enba [National School of Fine Arts]. With a great technical mastery, he dedicated himself in his work to textures elaborated with linear rhythms.

In 1965, he settled in Olinda, lecturing in wood engraving at the Universidade Federal da Paraíba – UFPA [Federal University of Paraíba]. In 1968, with the foreign travel prize won at the 17th Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna [National Salon of Modern Art], he spent two years in Europe. In 1971, he was invited by Ariano Suassuna to join the Movimento Armorial [Armorial Movement], directed towards popular Northeastern culture and the literature of the Cordel.

Gilvan Samico

His output is marked by the recovery of the poetry of the Northeast through the Cordel literature and the creative use of wood engravings. His engravings are populated by biblical and other figures deriving from myths and local stories, as well as fantastic and mythical animals. With the presentation of new subject matter, he introduced a formal simplification into his work, reducing the use of colour and textures.

Samico has works in the MoMA in New York and participated twice in the Venice Biennale with an award in one of them.

via Samico, Gilvan (1928- ).

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• Roots: Magalhães, Aloísio (1927)

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CR January: Made in Brazil

There’s a feature in our January/2010 issue (out 18 December) about São Paulo gallery Choque Cultural and its attempts to keep the tradition of letterpress Lambe-Lambe posters going by using Gráfica Fidalga to produce books and prints.

We thought it would be interesting to ask the workshop to create the artwork for our cover. Choque’s Baixo Ribeiro designed a layout using text supplied by us. We also gave him an EPS of the logo which the guys at GF made a stencil from and then routed out of a piece of wood.

For prints by Choque Cultural artists, check out the UK website here.

via Creative Review – CR January: Made in Brazil.

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• Rogério Duarte exhibition in Australia reviewed by UK’s Grafik magazine
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• For the 3rd consecutive time, CasaRex Receives a Communication Arts Award
• Galeria Choque Cultural featured on Wired Magazine
• Roots: J. Borges (1935)

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Lürzer’s Archive features Brazilian superhero art in advertising

Art directed by Ricardo Peroza and copy written by Marco Pupo, the ads were illustrated by Brazilian comic book artist Joe Bennett. Born in Belém, Bennett has been working for Marvel Comics since 1994, on characters such as Spider-Man, Captain America, Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, X-Men, Thor, Hulk and Conan the Barbarian, as well as for other major publishers such as Dark Horse, DC Comics and Vertigo, on characters as The Green Hornet and Teen Titans.

Lürzer’s Archive features Brazilian superhero art in advertising

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• A Brazilian talk about Asian design

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"Buy Prints Online" from Galeria Choque Cultural

We dropped by, and that is quite the with-it, street-artiste, Juxtapoz-style alternative gallery. And it’s in a neighborhood that is raging with giant street murals in a high underground-comix stylee.

*With its high-tech lowlife mix of keen design sense and grungola appropriated furniture, that place could be straight out of a novel. A Brazilian tupinipunk novel, presumably.

Projected to be a publishing house, Choque- as is called, ended up as a commercial QG of Brazilian young artists coming from graffiti, tattoo, graphic design, illustration and anything that speaks urban languages in Brazil.

In fact, Choque’s artists- composed of and eclectic mix of graduated designers and school drop outs, reflects today’s urban youth view on subjects involving social awareness, religion, vintage references, consumerism and today’s mutant urban feelings expressed in varied forms that goes from sculptures, abstract expressionisms to portraits of city sceneries, its people and its inner desires.

via Culture Shock Gallery, Sao Paulo | Beyond The Beyond.

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• Born in Brazil issue @ Wallpaper*
• Roots: ADG Brasil (Associação dos Designers Gráficos)
• Trabalho Gráfica Urbano para o Bairro do Bixiga wins Gold Medal from IDSA’s 2010 IDEA awards
• “Brazil Contemporary” Exhibition opens in Rotterdam, The Netherlands

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Milton Viola "Millôr" Fernandes

Milton Viola Fernandes (Rio de Janeiro RJ 1923). Satirical cartoonist, caricaturist, illustrator, writer, poet, playwright, translator. First drawing published in O Jornal, in 1934. At the age of 13, he was hired by the magazine, O Cruzeiro, where he carried out a variety of journalistic tasks: writing captions, pagination and working as office boy. In an attempt to improve his skills, he attended the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios [School of Arts and Crafts] of Rio de Janeiro from 1938 to 1943.

In 1939, after winning a story competition promoted by the magazine, A Cigarra [The Cicada], he was invited by Frederico Chateaubriand to write for the same magazine. He then created the Poste-Escrito [Written Post] section, writing under the pseudonym, Emmanuel Vão Gôgo, which he also used to write a column in the Diário da Noite, subsequently directing A Cigarra for three years. He also directed O Guri [The Kid], a magazine in comic strip format, and O Detetive [The Detective], of crime stories. In 1945, he produced Pif-Paf, the humour section of the magazine, O Cruzeiro, with articles by himself, also written under the pseudonym of Emmanuel Vão Gôgo that were initially illustrated by Péricles (1924 – 1961), and subsequently by himself.

In 1964, having already left O Cruzeiro, Millôr Fernandes edited the magazine Pif-Paf, which only ran for eight issues. From 1964 to 1974, he wrote a weekly column from Portugal for the newspaper, Diário Popular. From 1969 to 1975, he took part in the Rio de Janeiro-based weekly, O Pasquim, together with Jaguar (1932-), Tarso de Castro, Sérgio Cabral (1937), Henfil (1944 – 1988), Paulo Francis (1930 – 1997), Ziraldo (1932-), among others. In addition to his output in the printed media, Millôr has presented TV programmes on TV Itacolomi of Belo Horizonte, and on TV Tupi, of Rio de Janeiro. He writes poems, articles, adaptations and translations for the theatre and screenplays for the cinema, having also published dozens of books.

via Fernandes, Millôr (1923).

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• Luiz Carlos Barreto lifetime achievements highlighted in the New York Times
• Movements: O Gráfico Amador
• Roots: J. Borges (1935)
• Roots: Câmara, João (1944)

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"DESTINY" Making OF / Take Coins, 3ds max, September 2010 by Luciano Neves (cgsociety)

Autodesk has named the recipients of their prestigious Masters awards for 2009, handing out 15 awards to 3ds Max, Softimage, and Maya experts, who were recognized as exceptional people doing exceptional things with—and for—3D CG through the work they produce, through mentoring, and for their contribution to advancing the Autodesk tools they use. Among the nominees, Luciano Neves:

Born in São Paulo in Brazil, Luciano Neves is Director of 3D at Tribbo Post, in Brazil. During his two years working at this company, Luciano has directed many well recognized TV commercials and short-films, 3D projects, and cinematics for games. In his professional capacity, he leads and motivates a dedicated and highly professional team.Luciano is a perfectionist, creating highly-detailed, CG photo-realistic recreations and environments. While “Big Ben” and London’s Tower Bridge are some of the most recognizable of Luciano’s work, the Basilique du Sacré Coeur and Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris are also some other models that Luciano has recreated with Autodesk® 3ds Max® software. He is a Master Award winner in ELEMENTAL 1 and ELEMENTAL 2, and is also Excellence Award winner in EXPOSÉ 3. During a fourteen-year career, he has worked in many disciplines and companies throughout Europe

via The Area :: Autodesk Masters :: Luciano Neves.

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• Business Week’s Bruce Nussbaum talk about the “Best Design From Brazil”

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"Asian Graphics Now", by Julius Wiedeman and Bruno Porto

Taschen editor-in-charge Julius Wiedemann and co-author Bruno Porto showcased the upcoming 430 page book “Asian Graphics NOW!” at the German Consulate General in Shanghai, on September 15th 2010. The Pre-launch talk was attended by 120 local (Chinese and foreigners) designers, artists and journalists, and it was translated to Chinese by Ms Karen Xu.

Both Wiedemann and Porto were born and raised in Rio de Janeiro and respectively attended the Marketing and Design courses of Rio’s Faculdade da Cidade in the early 1990s.

Julius Wiedemann, Karen Xu & Bruno Porto by Mowfak Galy

The book is a collaboration between them, Taschen art editor Daniel Siciliano-Bretas (born in Rio de Janeiro, currently living in Köln, Germany) and Japanese design specialist Marcos Sadao Maekawa (born in São Paulo, currently living in Tokyo, Japan), and presents a wide selection of design projects from China (mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao), Japan, Korea, India, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam etc, divided in five sections – Advertising, Branding, Editorial, Non-Commercial and Packaging. It also features articles by Huang Li, editor of Package & Design Magazine, and Wang Min, Design Director of the Beijing Olympics 2008.

The first 100 pages of “Asian Graphics NOW!” can be leafed in http://www.taschen.com/lookinside/04440/index.htm

Read Also:

• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial in China
• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial goes to China
• Business Week’s Bruce Nussbaum talk about the “Best Design From Brazil”
• Chinese design magazines will publish over 200 pages of Brazilian graphic arts in 2010
• Brazilian illustration festival in China

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Composite of "Where is My Vote?" posters by Rico Lins and Yomar Augusto

Brazilian graphic designers Rico Lins and Yomar Augusto are among the 140 graphic artists that take part in “Where is my vote?”, a poster exhibition for the Green Movement in Iran presented in New York, at the Visual Arts Gallery (601 West 26th Street, 15th floor), from August 30th – September 25th, 2010.

Based on a curatorial concept by Green Bird and organized by Steven Heller, Anita Kunz, Woody Pirtle and Francis Di Tommaso in collaboration with Andrea Rauch, the exhibition features works of renowned international designers such as Milton Glaser, Isidro Ferrer, Seymour Chwast, Alain Le Quernec, Michael Vanderbill, Ralph Steadman, Massimo Vignelli and Ivan Chermayeff.

Posters can be seen at http://public.sva.edu/eblast/0099/web.html

Read Also:

• International panel debates still and moving images at the 2nd Brazil Film Festival in China
• Discover the Brazilian Cinema
• Felipe Taborda’s “Kabum! Mix” poster exhibition in Warsaw featured on Wallpaper.com
• The launching of Guarana Jesus new can wins the Gold Medal from IDSA IDEA 2010 Awards
• Brazilian design featured on Computer Arts Magazine’s “Viva Brasil” article

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NewGraphic #23 and PRO #02

Seems that after publishing the portfolios of illustrator Walter Vasconcelos and graphic designer Kiko Farkas in its bimonthly NewGraphic magazine (20 pages each, in issues #13 – 2007 and #21 – 2009, respectively), the Nanjing Arts Institute decided to make 2010 their ‘Year of Brazil’:

The #23 – April 2010 issue features over 100 projects of books, logos, packages, covers and pages of the famous Gráfica magazine designed by Oswaldo “Miran” Miranda, a “pioneer of Contemporary Graphic Design in Brazil”, as the magazine rightfully calls him in the first of the 20 pages allocated to the renowned Curitiba graphic artist.

In this issue, the publication also initiates a series of six articles that will present portfolios of Brazilian design companies and professionals with different styles and business models. Written and produced by Brazilian designer and educator Bruno Porto, each article will focus a specific theme. The first one, “Pop”, introduces over 80 projects of editorial design studio Laboratório Secreto and design agency Boldº_a design company in another 20 pages. Issue #24 will carry projects by eg.design and Tecnopop addressing “Identity”.

The Nanjing Arts Institute has also designated 42 pages of its new publication PRODESIGN to the Brazilian graphics. Its first two issues feature the illustration works of São Paulo’s (and Barcelona resident) Flavio de Morais and Rio de Janeiro’s Lula Palomanes, as well as the complete projects and texts of the two graphic design exhibitions presented by Bruno Porto in China in 2009, “DINGBATS BRASIL” and “One Year in Posters“. While NewGraphic is published in Chinese only, PRODESIGN is bilingual (Chinese / English). Pages of both publications can be seen in http://www.seecoo.com.cn/

Read Also:

• Kiko Farkas poster exhibition in China
• A Brazilian talk about Asian design
• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial in China
• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial goes to China
• Brazilian Posters in Warsaw International Poster Biennale

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OS GÊMEOS A mural by two Brazilian graffiti artists who call themselves Os Gêmeos has burst upon a corner of Houston Street and the Bowery (photo: Justin Maxon/The New York Times)

Which is to say that their fantastic, epic mural, on a concrete wall about 17 feet high and about 51 feet long, is light and frothy, a dream of happiness with an underlying chord of melancholy. And everything in it is exquisitely fine-tuned and detailed, a dazzlement of effortless technique that sustains long bouts of close looking. It will remain up until March.

The delicate black lines that thread throughout the entire image like drizzled charcoal dust are feats of spray-can painting. The prismatic color of everything else has a saturation unusual in graffiti art. The sky alone is half a spectrum. It begins with deep blue green at the top and descends through green and chartreuse to a golden, sunbathed yellow that serves as land, water, light, human skin and more.

And the storybook imagery is out of this world, yet not. Sure, people and things often levitate or are impossibly stacked, and the setting is a tad unreal — simultaneously wet and dry, or hard and spongy. But both the subways of New York and the favelas of São Paulo are here, and the figures wear brightly patterned garments (thanks to ingenious small-bore stenciling) that seem truly Brazilian. Plus, there are enough fish to placate the fish lovers of both cities. Sometimes these creatures have scales of many colors. Often they carry something in their mouths, like the bringers of good luck they are supposed to be: radiant little shacks, people or heads, whole figures. It’s magical realism with a touch of grit.

While the onslaught of figures, episodes and colors is at first overwhelming, a casual left-to-right reading suggests some narrative possibilities. Basically what we have here is a tale of escape and growth that begins in darkness and — after taking a few tips from the Bible, Hieronymus Bosch and M. C. Escher — ends in a stunning vortex of brilliant color. At far left, in the gray dimness of a narrow, cell-like space, a small figure strains toward the golden light seeping through a chink in the wall. Wearing pants, a jacket and a girlish scalloped bonnet and shouldering a bag, she’s leaving home, as the song says. A small spotted dog watches from the safety of a tenderly, elaborately wood-grained floor.

Through the chink the golden world awaits, arrayed around and above what seems to be a nearly circular waterfall; it’s a world populated by spirit guides, with or without gills. And it all adds up, or at least it is all visibly linked. You’re supposed to keep going, from one thing to the next, gaining wisdom along the way.

To sketch in some of the action, the connections begin with a boy on a four-poster bed (Dreamland’s point of origin) with a peacock on his back, using a second peacock as an ear trumpet. He listens to a whale whose skin, a mosaic of blues, is dotted with extra eyes. Atop the whale lies a girl (maybe our heroine, but older) so relaxed that the dots on her lavender-pink blouse are rising into the atmosphere like bubbles. The whale’s tail hooks over the rail of a snaking subway track, while the beast itself balances on a stack of three figures teetering on a rope bridge with iffy wood slats (San Luis Rey, anyone?) extending from one side of the waterfall to the other. (Don’t ask.)

Back on the tracks a subway car — the N train — is straddled by a large boy, who has human heads gathered around him like the day’s catch and a galleon on his head. A fish that is also a dirigible on its side is anchored to his hand. (Behind all this stretches a yellow out-of-focus landscape where the hills are faces.)

Next we are in the city where two boys who could be Os Gêmeos (Portuguese for the Twins, which the 35-year-old Pandolfo brothers are) are cramped inside a two-story, two-room house. The tracks continue into a station with an Escher-like mural of bright checkerboards receding to a vanishing point, and also the tag of Dash Snow, a New York graffiti artist who died last month and to whom the mural is dedicated.

The station is also part of a boat (touring the waterfalls?), with plush red seats tufted with yellow faces. At the front of the boat, next to a protective figurehead, sits a knowing young woman looking out at us amid bundles of patterned fabric. She has little houses in her green-and-black hair and wears a blouse whose planetlike dots are, this time, staying put.

The final third of the mural explodes in the rainbow vortex that is fabulously explicit in color but physically indeterminate. Sometimes it is a beach at low tide, sometimes a prison wall, sometimes quicksand, at least for a figure carrying a grandfather clock. Also here is a small Trojan horse (or maybe a mule), which brings back the lovely wood grain in warmer colors. Its neck is open and forms a double cameo for the faces of a boy and girl.

This telling omits many wonderful details. One of the best is front and nearly center in the image: a boy who seems to sit on a waterspout, wearing a fish mask and a T-shirt that is one of the painting’s best moments. It depicts a landscape: note the white stenciled stone wall, the changing greens of the tiny stenciled trees, the golden setting sun. It is an idyll of pastoral, escape-from-the-city living, cottage and all.

via Art Review – Os Gêmeos – Os Gêmeos, Brazilian Graffiti Artists, Create a World on a New York Wall – NYTimes.com.

Read Also:

• Rojo Magazine’s “RojoOut Urban Stage”, São Paulo
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• Roots: Oiticica, Hélio (1937 – 1980)
• Roots: J. Borges (1935)
• Brazilian posters for the Green Movement in Iran

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"The Map of the Interior World", by Eduardo Recife

One of Eduardo Recife’s earliest artistic memories is of a robbery. One night after dark, he and a friend were midway through their first attempt at pixação, a Brazilian graffiti style, when thieves ambushed them, took their shoes and told them to run. “We were 13, skinny and wussies,” Recife says. “We ran.”

His shoes were gone, but not his creative spirit. Recife, now 29, has become a prolific illustrator, collage artist, font designer and photographer with a bevy of high-profile clients like The New York Times, HBO and Panic At The Disco. Recife is careful to delineate between his personal work and commercial work (he has separate websites for the two, and declares that his personal site “is my playground!”), but both are well-regarded in the admittedly niche world of design blogs. “What made his work stand out was the looseness and spontaneity of it,” says John Martz, editor of illustration blog Drawn! “None of his work looks labored, yet it still has a very cohesive style.”

Recife’s collages blend typography, vintage photographs and illustrations with his own drawings. The aesthetic of the latter is simultaneously lush and barren, beautiful and grotesque. He admits that images of his home country—from distressed typography on signs to vernacular paintings on walls—have influenced his designs. “Brazil, apart from its problems, is such a beautiful place,” he says. “It is definitely a source of influence in my work—the colors, the people, the mountains, the ocean, the bright blue sky.”

via Eduardo Recife Finds His Footing :: Features :: Paste.

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• São Paulo’s Modern Art Museum “Brazilian Design Today: Frontiers”
• Make a Virtual Trip to Brazil through “Into Brazil” Project

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Capitu's Title Squence by Lobo featured on Creative Review's "Annual Best in Book"

Capitu is a Brazilian TV mini-series adaptation of 19th-century novelist Machado de Assis’ work, Dom Casmurro. The story centres on an ageing man looking back on his life in an attempt to discover whether his best friend is the true father of his son, who he has raised with his wife, Capitu.

De Assis’ novel is now considered one of Brazil’s most important Modernist texts and, in order to convey its radicalism, motion graphics studio Lobo looked to the Dadaist movement as inspiration for the TV show’s opening titles and interstitials. The team referenced what several avant-garde artists called ‘décollage’, a process where – rather than building up an image through layering – cutting and tearing instead reveals layers of buried images.

Here is the title sequence:
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

And here it’s how it was made:
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

via Creative Review – CR Annual Best in Book: Capitu.

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• A Brazilian talk about Asian design

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Ziraldo's poster for "Discover the Brazilian Cinema" exhibition

Ziraldo Alves Pinto (Caratinga, Minas Gerais, 1932 – ). Draughtsman, caricaturist, cartoonist, illustrator, journalist and writer. He presented his first drawing at the age of 7 in the newspaper Folha de Minas, in 1939. In 1949, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he contributed to the children’s publications Vida Infantil, Vida Juvenil and Sesinho, and began to publish works in the magazine, A Cigarra. In 1952, he entered the Faculty of Law of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais [Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) ] and contributed monthly to the magazine, Era uma Vez.

In 1954, he replaced the caricaturist Borjalo (1925 – 2004) on the daily Folha de Minas and contributed to the magazine Binômio. In 1957, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, and in the following year, began to work on the magazine, O Cruzeiro, where, two years later, he created the character, Pererê. With the success of this character, the company O Cruzeiro began to publish a monthly magazine consisting exclusively of his stories.

In 1963, he began to work for the Jornal do Brasil, and in 1964, for the magazine Pif-Paf, edited by Millôr Fernandes (1923-). In 1967, he edited the Sunday supplement, Cartum JS, of the Jornal dos Sports. In the following year, he gained international recognition and saw his drawings published in foreign magazines. He became a member of the founding team of the magazine, O Pasquim, launched in 1969.

Since then, he has devoted himself to the publication of children’s books, with many titles, most notable among which are Flicts (1969), O Menino Maluquinho [The Crazy Kid] (1980) and O Bichinho da Maçã [The Little Apple Worm] (1982). In 1982, he left the editorial of Pasquim to devote himself mainly to children’s literature. In 1999, he founded the magazines Bundas [Bums] – a parody of the society magazine, Caras and Palavra. In 2002, he began to publish a new magazine called Opasquim21.

via Ziraldo (1932).

Read Also:

• Roots: Fernandes, Millôr (1923)
• Discover the Brazilian Cinema
• Roots: Salgado, Sebastião (1944)
• Roots: Câmara, João (1944)
• Roots: Monteiro, Vicente do Rêgo (1899 – 1970)

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Eltono’s piece for Rojo Out Urban Stage

After São Paulo city officials ordered graffiti cleanup crews to leave work by Os Gêmeos and other famous São Paulo street artists alone, art collective and magazine Rojo asked the city’s Urban Development Department to allow them to tap artists like Tofer and MWM Graphics to help spice up drab concrete structures across the city. “It was the first time they’ve allowed it,” says Zagg Guimaraes, Rojo’s associate director in Brazil. “We’re trying to make the city more beautiful.” Dubbing the operation RojoOut, the public art exhibit continues a similar three-year project in Barcelona that they started in 2006.

Sponsored by Smart, the just-completed project commissioned Rojo-affiliated artists to paint 11 concrete structures including air-vent columns and blank walls across São Paulo over a few weeks. Nuria Mora, Tony de Marco, Superblast and Eltono got on scaffolds to paint, while MWM Graphics, Ovni and Tofer scaled and drew their work but handed it off to collaborators to carry out.

Spread across three locations, Avenida Juscelino Kubitschek by the Povo and Ibirapuera parks and near the Ibirapuera Park entrance, the permanent exhibit happily faces no threat of removal.

via RojoOut Urban Stage São Paulo.

Read Also:

• Galeria Choque Cultural featured on Wired Magazine
• Os Gêmeos Create a World on a New York Wall
• Trabalho Gráfica Urbano para o Bairro do Bixiga wins Gold Medal from IDSA’s 2010 IDEA awards
• Born in Brazil issue @ Wallpaper*
• São Paulo’s Modern Art Museum “Brazilian Design Today: Frontiers”

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J. Borges and his "Folhetos de Cordel", by LOST.ART

Artist and poet José Francisco Borges (J. Borges) was born in 1935 in the village of Bezerros, Pernambuco state, in Northeastern Brazil. Today Borges is Brazil’s best-known folk artist working in the woodcut medium, and his work has been exhibited all over the world. But he comes out of a long tradition of folk poet/artists who publish their own work in the form of small (generally about 6″ by 9″) cheap chap-books or pamphlets written in verse, known as folhetos. They are also known as literatura de cordel after the way vendors sell them in the marketplace, hanging over a string. This tradition (including the work of Borges) is described in detail by Candace Slater in her book Stories on a String: The Brazilian ‘Literatura de Cordel’.

Marion Oettinger, director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art, describes these folhetos in his book The Folk Art of Latin America: Visiones del Pueblo: “Brazilian chap books deal with popular poetry, accounts of local catastrophes, popular legends, famous crimes, and infamous love affairs. The Man who Married a Donkey, The Son Who Murdered His Parents in Order to Get His Hands on Their Retirement Benefit, The Football Game in Hell, and The Overturned Bus Disaster are examples of the alluring titles found in a typical marketplace. The front of these pamplets usually contain wood-block illustrations of the book’s contents, and they, in themselves, form a special type of folk expression…. Frequently, chap book vendors sing the songs in their books or read aloud the contents of their books to market crowds, many of whom are illiterate, and their voices usually draw enormous gatherings.”

José Francisco Borges began writing verse for folhetos in his 20s, and soon also began to operate a printing press to produce woodcut prints for their covers. “When I was a kid, the only leisure activity we had was to read cordel literature,” recalled Borges. “The way people watch telenovelas today, we read cordel booklets.”

While working as a salesman, Borges decided to try his hand at writing a story. He showed it to a veteran “cordelista,” who encouraged him to publish. It took eight years for Borges to save up the cash to self-publish his first edition. With nothing left over to pay an illustrator for the cover, which needed a requisite black-ink woodblock print, he had to produce his own artwork.

Now he has authored over 200 chapbooks and says that he’s lost count of how many he’s illustrated for less graphically-inclined storyteller-poets. His press Borges also prints booklets. “I get lots of orders of cordel booklets,” he said – including some that serve as company training manuals or that teach the basics of things like how to take out a bank loan. “Country hicks don’t like to read magazines, but if you give him a cordel booklet he’ll read it – and enjoy it,” Borges said.

"The Arrival of the Prostitute in Heaven", WoodCut, J. Borges

Working with just a knife and a chunk of wood, Mr. Borges proves that ”low-level technology often yields very powerful, moving and sophisticated results,” said Marion Oettinger, ”Thanks to Borges and others like him, the popular graphics tradition is alive and well in Brazil in a way that you don’t see in other countries.”

In the 1960s his woodcuts came to be recognized in their own right. According to Ariano Suassuna, writer, poet and a leading figure of the Armorial Movement, the Brazilian Cordel could be divided in the following cycles: the heroic, the wonderful, the religious or moral, the satiric and historic. J. Borges says that Ariano once told him “I was the best in the Northeast. Now he says I’m the best in the world,” noted Borges with a smile.

Borges followed the advice of some admirers to produce folio-sized stand-alone prints. Often in color, they depict the same fantastic and folkloric rural characters as the booklets: The Hangover Bar, The Cowboy Mass, The Girl Who Turned into a Snake, and The Macumba Ceremony. These have attracted the attention of museums and collectors. But even in larger formats, his prints reflect the same popular themes, such as The Honeymoon of Matuto (an archetypal back-country bumpkin), The Monster of the Backlands, The Woman who Put the Devil in a Bottle, The Arrival of the Prostitute in Heaven and many tales of the legendary bandit Lampião.

Borges’ work has now been exhibited all over Brazil as well as in Paris, Zurich, Buenos Aires and in Germany and the United States. The Louvre, the Smithsonian and the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe have exhibited Borges’ work. UNESCO has honored Mr. Borges with awards for his contributions to world culture. They also commissioned him to illustrate the cover of the United Nations 2002 calendar. The United States Library of Congress has preserved a body of Mr. Borges work in its’ permanent collection.

via Indigo Arts Gallery | Brazilian Folk Art | Jose Francisco Borges.

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• Gráfica Fidalga produces artwork for Creative Review magazine
• Movements: O Gráfico Amador
• Roots: Gilvan Samico (1928 – )
• Brazilian posters win 1st prize in Bolivia
• Roots: Fernandes, Millôr (1923)

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Rogério Duarte's poster for Glauber Rocha's movie "Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol", 1964

Rogério Duarte started his career as a graphic designer in the 1960s. He had begun his formation in this area by taking the experimental course offered by Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro MAM-RJ (‘Rio de Janeiro’s Modern Arte Museum’).

He worked with Aloísio Magalhães between 1961 and 1962. He was the art director of the Maurício Vilela Laboratory (1963), coordinator of the Visual Arts Department of União Nacional dos Estudades – UNE (‘National Students Union’) and director of the Editora Vozes (‘Vozes Publishing House’) from 1966 to 1968, director of DIA Desenho Industrial Audiovisuais –(‘Audiovisual Industrial Design’) (1972-1975), art director of Designio (1976 – 1978), and art director of Salvador’s City Hall (1985 – 1989).

Rogério is a multi-disciplinary artist. He is a poet, a musician and a graphic artist. He is famous for his collaborations with the musicians of the Tropicália movement, especially Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, his book covers and movie posters. In the latter field, he designed the poster of the movie “Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol” (1965) of Glauber Rocha, one of his most famous works.

Holding convictions that went fervently against the dogmatism of the School of Ulm, Rogério Duarte skillfully joined constructive principles acquired during his studies of design with elements of Brazilian popular culture, making a real visual anthropophagy during the period of military dictatorship in Brazil.

Rogério Duarte also holds two titles of Notório Saber em Artes Gráficas e Desenho Industrial (‘Notorious Knowledge in Graphic Arts and Industrial Design’) awarded by the Universidade de Brasília – UNB [ National University of Brasília] and by the Federal Education Council of MEC.

Currently, Duarte teaches in the School of Communications at UFBA (the Federal University in the state of Bahia).

via :: REDE DESIGN BRASIL ::.

Read Also:

• Roots: Câmara, João (1944)
• Rogério Duarte exhibition in Australia
• Alexandre Wollner featured in the “Distinguished Lecture Series” of the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
• Roots: Wollner, Alexandre (1928)
• Roots: Monteiro, Vicente do Rêgo (1899 – 1970)

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Computer Arts Desktop Wallpaper: Adhemas Batista

Brazil’s creative output is currently under the international spotlight. Books are being written, exciting work is being commissioned and reputations are being made. So what’s going on? Has Brazil just been ‘discovered’, or are Brazilian designers doing something different to the rest of the world?

Brazil is South America’s largest economy. It has borders with every other state on the continent bar Chile and Ecuador, its rainforest still harbours tribes of the last indigenous Indians, and back in 2002 it elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – one-time shoe-shine boy – as its president.

Brazil is an amazing place, yet we still know it best as the home of football, bikinis and Samba – it must seem a bit unfair to the locals. “Well, we do have a lot of football, girls in bikinis and Samba!” says Danilo Oliveira of graphics co-op Base-V.

Oliveira is from São Paulo, so would the answer be different further inland? Hop north-east to Belo Horizonte and you’ll find designer, typographer and illustrator Eduardo Recife. “People see Brazil as a jungle filled with naked girls,” he says, “but we have a very rich culture.” And when the rest of the world wakes up and smells the coffee, Brazilian design will take centre stage.

Nando Costa, the man behind Die Gestalten Verlag’s Brasil Inspired, spent five years working in the US, which has given him perspective. “As long as people recognise that the country has a lot more to offer, it doesn’t really bother us.”

The world is waking up to Brazilian design. “Lately, with all the hype around Brazilian culture, more and more designers have been working as freelancers, both for the local and the overseas markets,” says Costa.

This is healthy, but it’s leading to the creative equivalent of a brain drain. “More and more professionals are leaving the country, which is really sad,” says Costa. But there is a silver lining: “It’s always really great to have the experience and then later, if they want, they can go back to their home town and help take the market a bit further.”

There are many designers doing just that. Base-V recently completed a giant wall installation in São Paulo, Eduardo Recife has just finished a series of stills for HBO’s ‘Assume the position’; and since last December Nando Costa has been busy working on a series of 30 packaging illustrations for software giant Microsoft.

The rise of street art and graffiti is nowhere more prominent than on the streets of Brazil’s cities. “The influence is big – from fashion to animation,” agrees Oliveira. And even the official art market is beginning to open up: “Spaces and galleries with a specific interest in ‘street language’ are opening, particularly in São Paulo.”

“Brazil is a place of high contrast, and that’s very inspiring for an artist,” says Costa. “Chaos has always been inspiring, but it also instigates more thoughts about what one can do to change poverty, violence and other issues.” Art can make a difference, but as Oliveira points out, “It’s a very hard struggle because artists here have to fight for their space in the market.”

Eight Brazilian design talents you should be keeping your eyes on:
Mariana Bukvic
Based in São Paulo, interactive art director Mariana Bukvic is an example of Brazil’s outward facing designers. She has worked for many prestigious clients such as Nike, Coke and Nestlé, and has been honoured with numerous awards from the Cannes Cyber Lions to the D&AD.

Buraco de Bala
This studio has come a long way since its launch back in 1999 – always striving to develop the best solution within its powers, no matter what technique the team uses in order to accomplish its goals. Buraco de Bala works are mostly fuelled, “by craftsmanship and a special taste for the classic techniques and references.”

reismagos
Reismagos is a graphic design studio created by Alline Luz and Daniel Gizo. Since 2004 the pair have worked on commercial and experimental projects for national and international clients. Although this piece is about the 2006 World Cup, “Now we’re into designer toys – something quite unknown in Brazil,” says Gizo.

Flávio de Almeida Hobo
“My approach is analogical plus digital,” says Flávio de Almeida Hobo. Humans are “analogical beings” using digital tools. “The lack of money spent on projects here makes creativity essential. Less business, respect for nature and do the work with sincerity. Design can save the world.”

Yomar Augusto
Graphic artist Yomar Augusto has been published around the globe. From Brazil to China, The Netherlands to Russia, his work is highly respected. In 2004, Yomar was involved in two Rojo Magazine ArtStorm projects, where 18 artists from all over the world brainstormed a huge project based in Barcelona and Berlin.

Rogério Lionzo
Brazilian designer and illustrator Rogério Lionzo is making the world a better place with the gift of colour and form. The young artist is chuffed with his progress so far: “I am lucky enough to have great experiences and opportunities so far in my career.”

Nitrocorpz
The four founders of Nitrocorpz have been working together since graduating in 1998. “We do interactive media, illustration, print and motion work. Most of our work is done through email/IM.” Other projects include www.mixtape.nitrocorpz.com and www.neuralbrand.org.

Andre Matarazzo
Born in São Paulo, Andre Matarazzo travelled extensively throughout the world for 12 years, got upset with the state of online design in Brazil and decided to move back and launch gringo.nu. He is focused on online branding solutions.

via Computer Arts – Viva Brasil.

Read Also:

• International panel debates still and moving images at the 2nd Brazil Film Festival in China
• Discover the Brazilian Cinema
• Chinese design magazines will publish over 200 pages of Brazilian graphic arts in 2010
• Roots: Wollner, Alexandre (1928)
• Brazilian posters for the Green Movement in Iran

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Helio Oiticica's "Homage to Mondrian" (Photo by Michael Stravato for The New York Times)

Hélio Oiticica (Rio de Janeiro, 1937 – idem, 1980). Together with his brother, César Oiticica, Hélio began studying painting and drawing with Ivan Serpa at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro – MAM/RJ [Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro], in 1954. In the same year, he wrote his first text on the visual arts, after which, his recording in writing of reflections on art and his output became a habit. He took part in the Grupo Frente [Frente Group] in 1955 and 1956, and in 1959, became a member of the Neoconcrete Group. He abandoned his two-dimensional works and created spatial reliefs, bolides [fireballs/meteors], capes, standards, tents and penetrables.

In 1964, he began to make the so-called Manifestações Ambientais [Environmental Demonstrations]. At the opening of the Opinião 65 [Opinion 65] show, at the MAM/RJ, he protested when entry to the museum was denied to his friends, members of the Mangueira samba school, and he was expelled from the museum, holding a collective demonstration in front of it, in which the Parangolés were worn by his samba school friends. He took part in the Opinião 66 [Opinion 66] and Nova Objetividade Brasileira [New Brazilian Objectivity], presenting the Tropicália environmental demonstration. In 1968, he held the collective demonstration, Apocalipopótese [Apocalypopothesis] on the Aterro do Flamengo [Flamengo Land Reclamation Project], which included his Parangolés and Lygia Pape‘s Ovos [Eggs]. In 1969, at the Whitechapel Gallery, in London, he realised what he called the Whitechapel Experience, presenting the Éden [Eden] project.

For most of the 1970s, he lived in New York, during which period, he was a visiting scholar of the Guggenheim Foundation, taking part in the Information show, at the Museum of Modern Art – MoMA. He returned to Brazil in 1978. After his death, the Projeto Hélio Oiticica [Hélio Oiticica Project] was created in Rio de Janeiro, in 1981, with the aim of preserving, analysing and promoting his work, under the direction of Lygia Pape, Luciano Figueiredo and Waly Salomão.

Between 1992 and 1997, the Projeto HO staged a major retrospective that was presented in the cities of Rotterdam, Paris, Barcelona, Lisbon, Minneapolis and Rio de Janeiro. In 1996, the Secretaria Municipal de Cultura do Rio de Janeiro [Municipal Secretariat of Culture of Rio de Janeiro] established the Centro de Artes Hélio Oiticica [Hélio Oiticica Centre for the Arts], to house the entire collection of the artist and open it to the public.

via Oiticica, Hélio (1937 – 1980).

Read Also:

• Roots: Wollner, Alexandre (1928)
• “Brazil Contemporary” Exhibition opens in Rotterdam, The Netherlands
• Roots: Monteiro, Vicente do Rêgo (1899 – 1970)
• Movements: O Gráfico Amador
• Roots: Duarte, Rogério (1939)

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