In his article about the exhibition of paintings by Cícero Dias at the Faculdade de Direito (Recife), the art critic Mário Pedrosa notes that “no other Brazilian painter evolved as radically” as Dias, thus explaining the controversial reaction to the works on display in Pernambuco. Pedrosa discusses the public’s response from a sociological perspective and concludes that “(…) the viewing public there [Recife] or here [Rio de Janeiro] is still impervious to art thanks to the culture they possess rather than by an absence of culture. In aesthetic terms that culture is anachronistic, it is about three centuries out of date.” According to Pedrosa, Cícero Dias provided the Pernambuco audience with an excellent experience, initiating them into an appreciation of art and subjecting them to an aesthetic trauma. The exhibition was quite didactic because it “(…) showed, in a separate room, a reproduction of an indigenous drawing of palm trees, a landscape featuring coconuts by Telles Júnior, a landscape painting (by Picasso) of a similar scene, and one of his paintings inspired by the same theme.” Cícero invited the Diretório da Faculdade de Direito, including Pedrosa, and Aníbal Machado, Rubem Braga, and Orígenes Lessa to come to Recife to see the exhibition and take part in a round table discussion about the event.

Though most artists in Recife—with the exception of the brothers Joaquim and Vicente do Rego Monteiro (in Paris and in the capital of Pernambuco)—adopted a timid approach to abstract art in the early twentieth century, Cícero Dias was a ground-breaking innovator in the mid-1940s with his experimental abstract paintings. Art enthusiasts in Pernambuco were introduced to abstract painting as a result of Dias’ exhibition at the Faculdade de Direito (Recife) and his huge abstract mural at the Secretaria da Fazenda (1948). In response to the public’s heated reaction, Região magazine published a series of interviews and articles (including this one by Mário Pedrosa) designed to clarify the foundations of “abstract art.”

The magazine Região was launched in Recife (the capital of the state of Pernambuco) in 1945 and was published through December 1948 when the 10th and final issue appeared. It was originally directed by Flávio Guerra, but in 1946 Edson Regis took over the helm. The magazine’s goal was to cover “all modern literary and artistic activities” in the state of Pernambuco. Among its many contributors was Vicente do Rego Monteiro, one of the most distinguished modern artists in the country.   

The painter Cícero [dos Santos] Dias (1907–2003) attracted attention in Brazilian art circles in the 1920s and 1930s with his Surrealist-influenced work. He moved to Paris in the late 1930s and lived there for over fifty years. There he met and befriended Picasso and other painters such as Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, and Fernand Léger. During the turbulent 1940s he was briefly imprisoned by the Nazis (1942), then settled in Lisbon for a while (1943–45), where he worked at the Brazilian Embassy in Portugal. When he returned to Paris after the war he joined the Groupe Éspace, a group of abstract artists. While still in Paris (1948) he was commissioned to paint a mural at the Secretaria das Finanças do Estado de Pernambuco (in Recife, his birth place). In 1965 the Bienal Internacional de São Paulo devoted a special room to his works. Throughout the course of his career his work focused on abstract experimentation (a pioneering approach in Brazil) and an exploration of figuration. In 1998 the French government, under François Mitterrand, awarded him the L’Ordre National du Mérite de la France.  

[As complementary reading, see the following articles in the ICAA digital archive: the anonymous interview “Conversa com Cícero Dias: ‘No abstrato está o futuro da pintura’” (doc. no. 1111000); and by Olívio Montenegro “A exposição de Cícero Dias” (doc. no. 1110796)].