These “Excitáveis” were an important creative contribution by the artist from Ceará, Sérvulo Esmeraldo (b. 1929). He was one of the local artists best known in the world beyond Ceará in the twentieth century, along with Antônio Bandeira, Aldemir Martins, and Xico da Silva. His work had the greatest impact in the 1950s and 1960s, through tests with electrostatic electricity that contributed to both Kinetic and Constructive art. He was also a printmaker and illustrator for the daily newspaper Correio Paulistano, and in 1956, he founded the Museu de Gravura in his native city of Crato. With a scholarship from the French government in 1957, he studied lithography at the École Nationale Superiéure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he stayed for twenty years before returning to Brazil.
This text, written by the artist himself, was published in volume 8 of the famous series by the great Belgian book printer ColleXion (Antwerp: Guy Schraenen Éditeur, 1976). In the article, the writer methodically illustrates the process of constructing an “Excitável.” This is how he shows his natural interest in and subsequent research on the electrostatic properties of the human body and things around it. The resulting objects function as boxes/cases that contain materials subject to that static electricity; with tactile contact (whether spontaneous or planned), these materials begin to move as a result of the various electric charges accumulated in them.
As supplementary readings, there are three texts on Esmeraldo’s “Excitáveis.” The first, written by Olívio Tavares de Araújo, is “Sobre a chegada de Sérvulo ao livro objeto (onde também se fala do binômio de Newton)” [doc. no. 1110763], and the second, written by Esmeraldo, is “Sobre os Excitáveis” [doc. no. 1110764]. In addition, there is a catalogue of an exhibition that was held in the French capital under the same title as the essay by the artist, L’idée et la matière (Paris: Galerie Denise René, 1974) [doc. no. 1110761].