To the art critic Geraldo Ferraz, Lívio Abramo’s artwork departs from a drawing that then gradually begins to give way to “expressionist manipulations” etched on “bad” wood. Towards the end of the thirties, Abramo, who was a journalist, was the coordinator of the telegraphic services owned by the local newspaper (and privy to world news, such as news from China relating to the Nanjing massacre and news of the Spanish Civil War). His engravings at the time (just like Picasso’s Guernica in those years) expressed in his art the horror and outrage he felt relating to those events. According to Ferraz, the light he obtained through his etching tools when producing grooves (with gouges and burin) become Abramo’s main weapon against barbaric events, leading him to seek refuge in the intellectual circles of São Paulo in order to distance himself from the horror. The series Pelo Sertão [Through the Rural Northeast] that illustrates Afonso Arinos’s homonymous work for the Cem Bibliófilos [One Hundred Bibliophiles], marked a refined alteration in his technique as he works, in an almost ornamental way, with the obtained engraving starting from the top or counter edge of the wood. Subsequently, Abramo delves into his woodcutting techniques during his stay in Rio de Janeiro, producing small and beautiful engravings cut in different widths in an attempt to provoke the night flares of the city. He would also visit the Santería houses (Macumba and Candomblé), a phase Ferraz described as “The Spells of Blackness”. By end of the fifties, Abramo resided in Paraguay reveling in the (natural and urban) landscapes, which he would later transform graphically in his artwork generating prisms suggesting diverse angles to the common and ordinary. Ferraz reiterates Abramo’s importance as the country’s “teacher” at that time: “The master who once was, is now an activist of art teaching.” It is in this foreign domain where Abramo will find the amalgamation he so longed that makes him teeter between his two major works, the Rio [de Janeiro] series with its radiance and luminosity and the Pelo Sertão series with its strong rhythms.

There is no doubt that the art critic Geraldo Ferraz (1905–79) was the one who wrote the most about the artist and engraver Lívio Abramo (1903–93). Being a personal friend of the artist, as well as colleagues in the same newspaper, in his writings Ferraz would demonstrate his understanding and sensibility of the different periods of Abramo’s career. Ferraz also realized in the 1930’s how Abramo—showing his dislike for recording the mere “instant”—would portray in a concise way the surrounding landscape of the city of São Paulo. That allows Ferraz to include Abramo in a category aforementioned by Mário de Andrade: that of the “suburban painter.”

[As additional reading and texts about Abramo, see in the ICAA digital archive: by Geraldo Ferraz, (untitled) [“No Brasil, nos primeiros salões nacionais de belas artes (…)”] (doc. no. 1110610), and  (untitled) [“Indiscutivelmente, em nossas artes do desenho (…)”] (doc. no. 1110611); and by José Neistein, “Madeira, pedra e metal: os gravadores” (doc. no. 1110575), as well as “Livio Abramo: Forty Years of Engraving and Drawings” (doc. no. 1110608)].