A PINTURA É A VIDA

A ARTE DE NOÊMIA GUERRA

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The present retrospective of the painter Noêmia Guerra at the Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro, where she was born, is triply opportune: it pays homage to a great name in Brazilian painting; it enables the public to have contact with the work of an artist who is better known abroad than in her country of origin; and makes it possible to restore her place in the national plastic arts circuit, thus doing justice to an artist who, although she lived the greater part of her life abroad, never stopped using national themes in her work.

In addition, there is the significant fact that Noêmia Guer­ra returned to RIO in 2004, bringing home, on that occasion, all the paintings, watercolors and drawings in her possession, be­cause she wished her personal collection to be kept in her native country rather than in France or Portugal, the countries between which she divided her time during the four decades she lived in Europe. Countries that welcomed her, inspired her and gave her prestige, but that were not her own country, her movable feast, her creative matrix.

Noêmia Guerra was born in a unique phase of world his­tory (one year after the end of the First World War) and of the history of Brazilian art: between Anita Malfatti's anthological individual exhibition of 1917 and the Modern Art Week in 1922, which is often looked upon as a consequence of the former. She was born, therefore, in a world full of commotion and at a time when art was entering a period of questioning, from which it has not yet fully emerged - that is, if it should or will emerge from it one day.

The elements of renewal triggered by the Modern Art Week of 1922 changed Brazilian culture in various ways, created a fa­vorable terrain for the development of artistic activities, and reached a culminating point in 1951, when the First Internation­al Art Biennial of Sao Paulo was held and the National Modern Art Salon was set up in Rio de Janeiro.

The agents and initiatives paving the way during the three intervening decades were many, such as the Abstraction Atelier, opened in Sao Paulo by Samson Flexor in 1948, and the Modern Artists' Club, created by Flavio de Carvalho in the same city in 1932, besides the May Salons, which he promoted between the years 1937 and 1939. The following decade witnessed the birth of three of the most important Brazilian museums: the Sao Paulo Art Museum in 1947, and the Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo Muse­ums of Modern Art, both in 1948. Waldemar Cordeiro launched the Manifesto Rupture in 1952, summarizing the ideas of the "Rup­ture Group" in Sao Paulo, while two years later, Ivan Serpa cre­ated the Grupo Frente in Rio de Janeiro.

It was amid this creative turmoil that Noêmia Guerra de­cided to become a painter, though she had already attended art courses since she was fourteen. The greatest change happened in 1952, when she attended the fertile course given by the French artist Andre Lhote at the request of the Cultural Dissemination Department of the General Secretariat for Education and Culture of the Government of the Federal District (then located in Rio de Janeiro). Lhote, who had been Tarsila do Amaral's teacher in Paris, had a decisive influence on her, to the extent that Noêmia herself commented: "Thanks to him, I learnt to renounce the vanity of belonging to this or that vanguard, and to follow my vocation as a colorist painter".1

It would be unfair to say that Lhote was a better teacher than painter, for his work is unique; but he had an exceptional teaching talent, thanks to which he is remembered today, es­pecially, for references in the curricula of famous disciples. His skill did not lie in efficient transmission of techniques or con­cepts, but rather in his ability to get each student to develop in the most appropriate direction, finding the means to become what he or she already was, but was not yet able to express plas­tically. Far from wanting to form followers or to found a school of art, Lhote wished to free his pupils from all chains, as he well explained in 1937:

In my opinion, aggressiveness is one of the capital vir­tues in the arts. In the absence of deep perspicacity, simple common sense indicates that there is nothing more dan­gerous for a young person than to believe excessively in his masters. If they listen to the latter's voices with excessive docility, they run the risk of no longer listening to their own internal voices, which can do nothing other than in­cite rebellion. The student who is fated to great achieve­ments always nourishes, without realizing it, some trace of skepticism, some as yet unformulated irreverence .2

When planted in the fertile ground of a receptive spirit, the teachings of a great master can germinate years later, like those seeds found in Egyptian tombs, which sprouted thousands of years after being deposited there by priests. So it is no exag­geration to attribute to Lhote's influence the decision taken by Noêmia Guerra, six years after the above-mentioned course, to dedicate herself exclusively to painting. So in October 1958 she moved to Paris. The courage shown by Noêmia Guerra when she gave up everything for her painting, in order to live according to her principles, caused a great impression not only among friends and family, but also in the world of plastic arts itself.

Only a person of singular character - frank, direct and simple - could dare to make this gesture of rupture. According to declara­tions of friends since "the times of short socks" at Colegio Sion, Noêmia was a kind of person that is rare, even today, because she was true and did not deceive anyone - including herself.

After taking on the commitment to her own destiny, Noêmia Guerra never hesitated or regretted her decision. When she had her first exhibition in Paris, in May 1966, the Jornal do Brasil cor­respondent in the French capital, Celina Luz, observed:

Noêmia Guerra is a Brazilian artist who has been work­ing in Paris for seven years, where she is currently exhib­iting her paintings for the first time. Having given up a whole life that was built along different lines in order to dedicate herself exclusively to painting, she has worked al­most anonymously all this time. Her first exhibition was inaugurated last week at the Jacques Massol Gallery.

The artist has not made any concession in order to achieve what she has achieved. She painted until the day when, by the force of circumstance, her art called the at­tention of the experts. It was they who sought her out in her Montparnasse atelier. The twenty-two paintings in the exhibition - representing Brazilian landscapes or sketching typical figures from the different regions of our country - are hanging on the gallery's walls. The artist is enormously satisfied and admits it herself.3

This first individual exhibition in France had been preceded by another in London, at St. Martin's Gallery, held in the previous year. This illustrates Noêmia Guerra's iron discipline, because it shows that she spent practically seven years doing research, working and perfecting her technique in silence, before showing her work to the demanding European public. The only exception was the trial balloon that was her participation in the collective exhibi­tion ArtContemporain, held at the Grand Palais, in Paris, in 1963.

It was not therefore out of indulgence that a respected critic like professor Ouirino Campofiorito declared:

Noêmia Guerra is a tireless worker. The eleven years spent in Paris have meant painting and drawing without respite. Her work today is not only great in numbers, but offers a line of evolution that totally differentiates our art­ist from those who today are crazily looking for novelties and can only appear thanks to them. Noêmia, on the con­trary, has built her work with effort - not only physical but with all resources of sensibility, understanding and profes­sional responsibility. Painting has been for her a means of employing her energy, a struggle against vulgarity and an overflowing of attitudes seasoned with the best human warmth. When one gets to know the artist one recognizes her frank, fighting temperament, ready to face any diffi­culty, to defend her ideas with determination and impose a brilliant personality. Noêmia Guerra is a great Brazilian artist who lives in Paris, building a life's work that will one day receive from her compatriots the appreciation it de­serves. Painting for fun is foreign to Noêmia."

Before leaving Rio de Janeiro, Noêmia Guerra executed a work of art that deserves mention, despite the fact that it is somewhat circumstantial in its production, being the only work of hers that is known in this area in Brazil: the mural at Ave­nida Raul Pompeia n° 131, at the corner of Rua Julio de Castilho. A beautiful, luminous abstract composition that establishes a dialogue with the best work of Paulo Werneck, the undisputed master of the genre in Brazil, and which won the following com­ment from Henrique Gougon, an expert on murals:

Among all the mural works that decorate facades or the interior of buildings in Copacabana, one of them trans­lates a singularity that deserves appropriate study due to the chromatic construction of the stones, which has no par­allel in any other public place in the city. [...] As the panel she made is exuberant and gives a real lesson in chromatic composition in pastiThas [ small glass squares], it would be very helpful if there was a small plate at the site, informing the date of the work and the name of the author, in view of the great interest it arouses. After all, the panel arouses emotions and enriches the looks of the area, stirring up the aesthetic sense of the inhabitants of the district .5

It should be said that the suggestion made by the research­er Henrique Gougon was accepted by Noêmia Guerra's children, who had a bronze plate installed at the spot on April at the spot on April 29th of this year of 2009.

When she started to exhibit her work publicly in Europe, in the mid-sixties, Noêmia Guerra re-established a cycle that had found excellent receptivity here before she moved to Paris. What is most impressive when one examines the first phase of Noêmia Guer­ra's career is the wide acceptance of her work, evident in her par­ticipation in national salons and in biennials, as well as in other events of great importance. One of the highlights of this phase was her participation in the Third Modern Art Salon, which went down in history with the name "Black and White Salon", due to the protest of artists led by Ibere Camargo against the low quality of the material produced in Brazil and also the State's apparent interest in the problems faced by the profession. The salon took place between May 15 and June 3o, 1954, and among its partici­pants were Portinari, Djanira, Sergio de Camargo, Antonio Ban­deira, Ouirino Campofiorito, Scliar, Renina Katz, Decio Vieira and Aldemir Martins. On that occasion, a manifesto signed by over Goo artists was delivered to the Minister of Education, An­tonio Balbino de Carvalho Filho. The following extract from the article that Mario Barata, a professor and historian and then one of the most important critics in the country, dedicated to the event well explains the motives behind the act of protest:

How many people have asked why the name black and white was chosen for the artists' protest, in this year's salon? Many, no doubt. And there is nothing easier to explain: the artists wished to make it very clear that they did not have colors to cover their paintings, illuminating them with the greens, blues, reds and yellows that the public love so much, and to which the Western tradition assimilated, to a great extent, the concept of painting.

That is the main reason for the black and white, which, moreover, due to its unprecedented nature and contrast, would call greater attention to the difficulties they face. A refusal to open the Salon would be an ordinary strike, far to common... The real fact of having restricted themselves to the use of black and white is much more horrifying and surprising. More likely to stir up public opinion and to force the authorities to attach importance to this problem and to these people, the one being so neglected and the others so disregarded in Brazil: culture and artists. And, at the same time, literally a lesson.'

In Paris, while she concentrated on the long initial period of studying and reaching maturity, Noêmia Guerra was concerned to cultivate the links that tied her to Brazil, ensuring her pres­ence in important national movements. In 196o, for example, she participated inathe 9th National Modern Art Salon, together with Amilcar de Castro, Sergio de Camargo, Abraham Palatnik, Aluisio Carvao, Arcangelo Ianelli, Antonio Bandeira, Bustamante Sa, Sigaud, Glauco Rodrigues, Hello Oiticica, Inlaid de Paula, Ione Saldanha, Rubem Valentim , Samson Flexor, Fukushima, Tomie Ohtake, Willys de Castro, Abelardo Zaluar, Anna Letycia, Antonio Henrique Amaral, Edith Behring, Farnese de Andrade, Fayga Os­trower, Hercules Barsotti, Samico, Ibere Camargo, Lothar Charoux, Lygia Pape, Maria Bonomi, Renina Katz, Rossini Perez, Joaquim Tenreiro and Vera Mindlin. On this occasion, Noêmia Guerra ob­tained the Jury Exemption Certificate with her work Onda (Wave).

In 1963, Noêmia participated in the 6th Sao Paulo Interna­tional Biennial, with her works Estridencia Abertura and Tabernocu­lo Vermeiho (Stridence, Opening and RedTabernacle). In 1967, when she had already held two individual exhibitions in London (St. Mar­tin's Gallery in 1965, and Alwyn Gallery in 1966) adiad one in Paris (Jacques Massol Gallery, 1966), Noêmia Guerra was chosen by the curator Regina Liberalli Laemmert to take part in the exhibition Trends in Contemporary Brazilian Painting, at the National Museum of Modern Art. The following also took part in this important col­lective exhibition: Di Cavalcanti, Portinari, Pancetti, Guignard, Santa Rosa, Djanira, Antonio Bandeira, Ibere Camargo, Ubi Bava, Tiziana Bonazzola, Burle Marx, Hilda and Ouirino Cam­pofiorito, Aluysio Carvao, Milton Dacosta, Maria Leontina, Ru­bens Gerchman, Rebolo, Arcangelo and Thomaz lanelli, Manabu Mabe, Anita Malfatti, Emeric Marcier, Tomie Ohtake, Inima de Paula, Loio Persio, Domingos Toledo Piza, Ione Saldanha, Scliar, Ivan Serpa, Sigaud and Rubem Valentim.

Also in 1967, Noêmia Guerra participated in the 9th Sao Pau­lo Biennial with three paintings of the series Danca da Palha Roxa (Purple Straw Dance). It should be recalled that the following also took part in the painting section of this edition of the Biennial, which was one of the best: Jose Roberto Aguilar, Antonio Hen­rique Amaral, Geraldo de Barros, Belmonte, Flavio de Carvalho, Pedro Escoteguy, Luciano Figueiredo, Flavio Shiro, Samson Flex­or, Fukushima, the brothers Arcangelo and Thomaz lanelli, Nel­son Leirner, Manabu Mabe, Maria Leontina, Ascanio M.M.M. , Tomie Ohtake, Glauco Rodrigues, Ione Saldanha, Dionfsio Del Santo, Claudio Tozzi, Rubem Valentim, Decio Vieira and Wesley Duke Lee. Not to mention that in other modules there were also names that were firmly established as among the most signifi­cant in the history of Brazilian art, such as Farnese de Andrade, Antonio Manuel, Mira Schendel and Carlos Vergara, in the draw­ing section; Emanoel Araajo, Edith Behring, Maria Bonomi, Ana Bella Geiger, Fayga Ostrower, Rossini Perez, Arthur Luiz Piza, Anna Letycia Ouadros and Samico, in the engraving section; and Lygia Clark, Waldemar Cordeiro, Rubens Gerchman, Abraham Palatnik, Jose Resende, Nicolas Vlavianos and Franz Weissmann, in the sculpture section.

The success achieved by Noêmia Guerra in Europe made her a reference for the Brazilian art community: when traveling, they would make a point of attending the opening of her exhibitions in Paris. They would also be on the alert for her rare visits to Rio de Janeiro, as evidenced by the following article by Ouirino Cam­pofiorito, precisely with the title "Noêmia Guerra is in Rio". It is worth quoting a good piece of the text, due to what it reveals of the artist's living and working conditions in the French capital, as well as the interest that her work continued to arouse in Brazil:

After a long absence from Rio, the carioca painter Noêmia Guerra has arrived for a quick visit, which even so will provide an opportunity to see friends again and to rest from her in­tense artistic activity in Paris, where she has long been resid­ing. In the French capital, Noêmia Guerra has managed to de­velop exceptional activity, not only due to her temperament exclusively dedicated to artistic work - that is, her art, paint­ing - but also to fulfill commitments to collectors and galler­ies in Paris and in London that deal with her production.

Those who know the commitments taken on by an art­ist in the great European gatherings, when his work wins the interest of the erudite public, know only too well that his activity cannot repose carelessly on the first successes; on the contrary, the artist will no longer be able to rest in his atelier, where labor becomes unceasing, especially with respect to an evolution consciously sought and to which no concessions can be made. The artist then faces the duty al­ways to enhance his creative capacity, sustaining or confirm­ing a personality that will not be mistaken for vulgarity.

From the time Noêmia Guerra stopped being just an­other foreign artist passing through Paris - that is, she stopped being a tourist or artist curious about the sources of culture that Europe has to offer - from the time our brave painter became a member of the Paris art community, and set up her atelier there in order to face the competition for the opinion and esteem of the public and the critics, we can say of her that she fits into all the observations made above. However, it is a pity that Noêmia Guerra does not favor us with an exhibition of paintings produced in Paris in the last ten years, paintings that have been shown in individual and collective exhibitions in France and in the most important European centers, among which London has appeared ri­valing Paris in its attention to the work that Noêmia Guerra has been consolidating, thanks to her sense of responsibil­ity, sustained in the face of the strictest and most complex criteria for artistic creation at present. Not moving one inch from the rigors of painting, her work has been a serious pro­gram of research into problems related to color and matter. To which one must add an untiring effort at formal materi­alization that will ensure or sustain, for all the conditions of the painting, that seriousness that is not always remem­bered or desired in the haste of inconsequent ambitions.'

This text gives evidence of Noêmia's total and exclusive com­mitment to painting, maintained to the very end, even during the long period of almost two decades - between the end of the sixties and the end of the eighties - when the hastiest individuals went as far as to declare "the death of painting". A painter of conviction, Noêmia Guerra never allowed herself to be seduced by any type of fantasy, adhering to the very end to the destiny she had designed for herself. This is because, as well observed by the critic George Whittet: "Starting at an age when the majority of artists have al­ready mastered their technique, Noêmia Guerra adopted painting, imbued with the certainty that art was not a compartment of life but rather life itself".8 Such a statement is no exaggeration, be­cause all those who met her are unanimous in pointing out this love of painting as a distinctive feature. It is a passion anchored and developed in practice itself and born from the certainty that, just like in alchemy, the transmutation occurs not only in the matter, but also in the practitioner, who changes and deepens his own essence in the solitary and tireless struggle with matter. To Noêmia Guerra, doing is as important, or more important, than the final result, and due to that - unlike what happened to most artists as from the end of the sixties - she would not let herself be seduced by mechanical means for image production, nor by installations or any other type of artistic manifestation in which the work is predominantly mental and doing is delegated to ma­chines, technicians or assistants. As she herself explained:

I don't follow fashion trends. It is now in fashion to hate paintings. My natural inclination is towards painting and I don't think everything is lost. The world lives in rebel­lion, a crystallized state of disappointment. And then, no-one is interested in the beauty all around. [...]

I don't think one can eliminate love from nature. Paint­ing produces a communion with nature, which filming, for example, as it is mechanical, does not. Painting has an in­tuitive logic, and I am in favor of this logic of intuition, if you like to call it that.

Noêmia Guerra lived all her life under the aegis of art, and a note in her diary during a journey to Amsterdam on September 15, 1963 proves that this interest came from her childhood days. In the text in question, she tells how she felt standing outside the Rijksmuseum even before it opened, with cold hands and warm heart in view of the approach of the long-awaited pleasure: to have a close look at the paint­ing "Woman [in blue] reading [a letter]", by Vermeer, a re­production of which had been given to me when I was just a girl. My father sent it to me. This vision has accompanied me my whole life. There is purity, a light of faith, in this painting by Vermeer.

Further on she summarizes the impact of seeing the origi­nal, thus:

Here we are before the soul of this man who was capa­ble of giving life to his emotion. The painting is translucent. It is obviously different from the reproduction - what clar­ity of purpose. Everything in Vermeer denotes the strength of unity.

You do not find the defects of the baroque pearl... it is as perfect as a round pearl that receives light and cap­tures it. Perhaps he meditated that man is not the primor­dial source of light, that he is made fertile by another spirit, the light of the Sun-god or whatever... Then, like the pearl, man's spirit receives the light. I don't want to produce ' sub-literature' (a tear for my ignorance...) and now let's enter the Night Watch room.

After spending over five hours at the Rijksmuseum, Noêmia Guerra and her companion still find the energy to visit Rem­brandt's house; and later, transcribing the sensations she had experienced in her dairy, she comments that both had complete­ly lost the notion of time, speculating whether that was not the fourth dimension, and concludes:

All these paintings of those great spirits, of those "seers", "knock us out". They are symbols of the force that we call spirit. It is metaphysical. The being, the spirit, with the power to transform itself, through its passion, into a concrete object.

This comment denotes a spiritual concept of art that was already present in the notes of September 4, in the same year of 1963, referring to her first visit to the Sistine Chapel:

Michelangelo's life was an act of love, of faith in his own strength. Everything coming from his hands has the flame of the fire of the spirit. The communion we experi­enced, both of us, in the Sistine Chapel took place in the shadow of each small gesture of this God-king who, in­spired by the poor human creature, reached the supreme beauty of suspended time.

It is curious that Noêmia associated the feeling of trans­portation and elevation given by Michelangelo's art with the suspension of time, because the artist himself did the same in a poem about love for the divine, written in the fifteen-twenties, in which he declares: "Fortunate the soul that does not see time pass by, / it passed you by while contemplating God":°

Just as it is for Michelangelo, art is, for Noêmia Guerra, an in­strument of transcendence and access to a higher level of existence. sacred because of its transcendental and metaphysical nature, but not conditioned by any doctrine or religious belief. Everything in her is an unceasing effort to escape from banality and social con­ventions, in order to try to live only the truly significant part of existence, finding a meaning for life not in accumulating and in exacerbating the senses, but rather in synthesis and purification.

Noêmia Guerra's artistic production is the affirmation of an existential posture, it is visceral and inevitable. Noêmia had a public life, a artistic career celebrated in her lifetime. But she would certainly have produced with the same perseverance and the same determination if she had encountered nothing but mis­understand*hg and indifference, As observed by the English critic Richard Walker, with great propriety, the strength of her paint­ings lies in the fact that "they were produced from 'within', in or­der to express an insight, not aiming at external effects. [...] hers are paintings that are not about what is but about what is felt".-

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PHILOSOPHICAL PATHS

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A voracious reader since childhood, Noêmia Guerra was not only concerned with learning technical matters in artistic realization, but was also interested, and deeply interested, in the theory and the history of art. From the statement of her partner for four de­cades, Julian Luna de Prada", it is known that soon after her ar­rival in Paris, in October 1958, Noêmia Guerra started to attend classes in the history of art at the College de France, being espe­cially interested in the teachings of Rene Huyghe and Yves Bon­nefoy; she attended the classes of the latter until he retired, in 1992. Created in 153o by Francois I, the College de France, located in the heart of the Ouartier Latin, had everything necessary to attract a spirit thirsty for knowledge like that of Noêmia Guerra. In fact, the College, whose motto is the Latin device Docet om­nia (the teaching of all things), brings together teachers and re­searchers from all fields of knowledge, with the objective of dis­cussing "research at the time when it is being effected", without, however, the concern of granting titles and diplomas.

Her plunge into aesthetics studies led Noêmia Guerra also to participate in the activities of the Societe Francaise d'Esthetique (of which she also became a member of the Comite d'Honneur) and, in London, in the International Society of Aesthetics, where she made friends with one of its bastions, professor Harold Os­borne. In the course of time, she took part in important inter­national congresses, especially in Nottingham (England), Lju­bljana (Slovenia), Madrid, Budapest and Tokyo, in 2001, when she presented a "communication".

Parallel to her studies in aesthetics, Noêmia Guerra stud­ied philosophy at the College de France from 1959 on, taking the courses of the renowned philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean Hyppolite. When the College International de Philoso­phie was created in 1981, she also started to attend it, showing preference for the courses and seminars given by Alain Badiou, Pierre Bourdieu and Regis Debray.

Noêmia Guerra's last aesthetic and intellectual adventure started in the year 2000, when she was already eighty years of age: the study of oriental calligraphy (Chinese and Japanese), a synthesis writing in which ideas acquire plastic consubstantiation by means of ideograms which no longer belong simply to the domain of writ­ing itself, but also encompass qualities of the pictorial universe, in such a way that a poem written in the traditional ideograms is, at one and the same time, a literary piece and a work of art. In 2004, already feeling physically weaker, she decided to return to Brazil; and she died on July 25, 2007, in the city of Rio de Janeiro. If she were alive, Noêmia Guerra would be ninety years of age today - a birthday that the present retrospective aims to celebrate.

Quoted by George Whittet in the presentation of the cata­logue for Noêmia Guerra's exhibition at the Jacques Massol Gal­lery, Paris, 1966, page 3.

2 TESNIERE, Jacqueline "Le Bordelais Andre Lhote au Bresil". Bor­deaux: La vie de Bordeaux, December 13, 1969.

3 Luz, Celina. "A supreme vocac-do de Noêmia" (Noernia's supreme vocation). Rio de Janeiro: Jornal do Brasil Section B, May 26, 1966.

4 CAMPOFIORITO, Ouirino. "Noêmia Guerra escreve de Paris" (Noêmia Guerra writes from Paris). Rio de Janeiro: 0 Jornal, March 6, 1969, Plastic Arts column.

5 GOUGON, Henrique, "A arte do mosaico no imagindrio dos habitantes de Copacabana" (Mosaic art in the imagery of the inhabitants of Copacabana), in http://mosaicosdobrasil.tripod.com/, visited on April io , 2009.

6 BARATA, Mario, "Verlag-des em torno dos Cinzas e da Monocromia" (Variations on Grays and Monochrome). Rio de Janeiro : Didrio de Noticias, May 3o, 1954, PlasticArts column.

7 CAMPOFIORITO, Ouirino. "Noêmia Guerra esta' no Rio" (Noêmia Guerra is in Rio). Rio de Janeiro: 0 Jornal, September 1, 1968.

8 George Whittet, in the presentation of the catalogue for Noêmia Guerra's exhibition at the Jacques Massol Gallery, 1966, p 2.

9 Statement to Helena Beltrao. Type-written text, without a date, but probably from the end of the sixties.

10 micH ELANGEL 0, Poems. Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora, 1994, page 41.

11 WALKER, Richard. London: Arts Review, February io, 1973.

12 Statement written by Julian Luna de Prada at the request of the artist's son, Ricardo Villemor Cordeiro Guerra. The text was written directly in Portuguese, dated July 17, 2007, and posted in the French town of Cressensac.