After spending many years in Paris, the artist Cícero Dias returned to his native city, Recife, in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco. There at the Faculdade de Direito, he exhibited his work, which was of a distinctly abstract nature. In his review of this exhibition of very abstract work, the writer Olívio Montenegro suggests that it was painted to express the least organic, indefinite, and pure aspects of the tangible reality of things. The article was published in the Revista Região.

Following the very timid forays into abstraction by artists of the early twentieth century in the city of Recife—with the exception of the work produced by the brothers Vicente and Joaquim do Rêgo Monteiro in the 1920s—it was Cícero Dias (1907–2003) who produced abstract painting in the mid-1940s. His exhibition at the Faculdade de Direito de Recife and his grand abstract mural at the state’s Secretaria da Fazenda [Treasury Department] (1948) brought the art viewing public in the state of Pernambuco face-to-face with abstract art. The Revista Região published reactions and heated discussions, including a series of articles that sought to elucidate the fundamentals of abstract art, as identified in his essay by Olívio Montenegro.    

The Revista Região was launched in 1945, and was published in Recife until (probably) December 1948, when the tenth issue appeared. It was originally edited by Flávio Guerra, but entered a “new phase” in 1946 when Edson Regis became the new director. The goal of the magazine was to cover “all the modern literary and artistic activity” in the state of Pernambuco. One contributor to the magazine was the artist, designer, and book illustrator Vicente do Rego Monteiro, a prominent figure in the Brazilian avant-garde during the 1920s.

[As complementary reading, see the article about the above-mentioned artist in the ICAA digital archive: “Conversa com Cícero Dias: ‘No abstrato está o futuro da pintura’” (doc. no. 1111000)].