The art critic Frederico Morais states that one of the main aspects of art involves the participation of the viewer, and in his opinion, without that [element] the work does not exist. Under such conditions and determinants, the artist’s role ends up being the “simple intermediary between the work and the viewer.” To address this issue, Morais focuses on the work of three sculptors: Gastão Manoel Henrique, Mary Vieira, and Amilcar de Castro. He explains, from the critical perspective, how the participatory process works for each of these artists, and he mentions “the times” of Henrique’s geometric figures and Vieira’s multivolume sculptures. Morais believes that the participation of the viewer in the well-known work produced by Amilcar de Castro operates at a semantic level: “beneath the initial meaning of the work (…) the viewers start to relive that organic, perceptive experience deep in their inner beings.”

Frederico [de] Morais (b. 1936) was one of the leading public figures in art criticism in Brazil. For many years he wrote art criticism as a journalist for Diário de Notícias and O Globo in Rio de Janeiro. He was one of the most active “committed” critics in the 1960s and 1970s, supporting various avant-garde movements during that period as well as serving as a curator. 

This text is not linked to any specific exhibition and was written in the context of the transformations that took place in art in the 1960s, added to the issue of “viewer participation.”

What this text has in common with others that have more specific hypotheses, such as “A vocação construtiva da arte latino-americana” [doc. no. 808244], is the purpose of the criticism. Morais seeks to make it clear that the artwork produced in the subcontinent is altogether different from the reductive characterizations and stereotypes set forth in the “History of Art” as related by the central countries. Regarding the specific case of the Brazilian sculptor Mary Vieira linked to the Hochschule für Gestaltung (Ulm) [Ulm School of Design] that was subsequently based in Switzerland, there is a text by Italian poet and critic Carlo Belloli, “A respeito da obra de Mary Vieira” [doc. no. 1091605].

Moreover, the art critic Ferreira Gullar comments on the “Esculturas de Amilcar de Castro” as examples of Neo-Concrete art [doc. no. 1091573].