Olívio Tavares Araújo—the journalist and art and movie critic whose reviews appear in popular magazines like Veja e Isto É—clarifies his critical view of the “object-poems” and the “excitáveis,” the important works by Sérvulo Esmeraldo (b. 1929), the artist from the state of Ceará. The “excitables” are actually the result of his experimentation with the human body’s spontaneous or programmed electrostatic properties. Esmeraldo is one of the best-known twentieth-century Ceará artists outside of his home state, in company with Antônio Bandeira, Aldemir Martins, and Xico da Silva. His work became well-known during the 1950s and 1960s as a result of his experiments with electrostatic energy, which contributed to both kinetic and constructive art. He was a printmaker and illustrator at the Correio Paulistano newspaper, and founded the Museu de Gravura in his home town in 1956. In 1957 he was awarded a scholarship by the French government to study lithography at the École Nationale Superieure de Beaux-Arts, and did not return to Brazil for another twenty years. More recently, he was the planner and organizer of two editions of the Exposição Internacional de Esculturas Efêmeras (1986 and 1991) held in Fortaleza, the state capital of Ceará, at each of which the ephemeral nature of art continued to interest him.
In reference to this matter, see by Sérvulo Esmeraldo, L’idée et la matière (exh. cat.; Paris: Galerie Denise René, 1974) [doc. no. 1110761]; and “Método prático e ilustrado para construir um excitável, precedido de uma notícia sobre eletricidade estática,” in Volume 8. ColleXtion (Antwerp/Paris: Guy Schraenen Éditeur, 1976) [doc. no. 1110762].