The art critic José Geraldo Vieira reviews the history of Surrealism and mentions Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, and William Hogarth, among others. In the critic’s opinion, these artists created a “cosmogony of the absurd” centuries ahead of the artistic eccentricities of Wolfgang Paalen, Walter Svanberg, and Simon Hantai, who were admired by the Surrealist magazine Medium that had recently been launched in Paris. Vieira makes a distinction between the terms “fantastic,” “oneiric,” and “Surrealist.” The fantastic artist is interested in the inventive aspect (the creation of lines, colors, and planes), and “applies the constants of a particular craftsmanship.” The “oneiric” artist, on the other hand, tends to present his work as a “poetic expression” of dreams, as though he were “a romantic recounting his lyrical adventures.” The “Surrealist” articulates a form of “cerebral diction” in which artistic language is simply an inspiring process. The author discusses the work of the Brazilian artist Marcelo Grassmann, whose bestiary of winged figures seems to spring from the world depicted in medieval prints. Vieira claims that this artist belongs in the category of “fantastic art,” and describes his grotesque scenes as the product of a “magical” craftsmanship that is closer to Bosch or Bruegel the Elder than to Surrealism. 

In this essay the art critic José Geraldo Vieira differentiates between “fantastic art,” “oneiric art,” and “Surrealism,” attempting to defend the work of the Brazilian printmaker Marcelo Grassmann in his comparison with both “historical” and contemporary Surrealism. As distinct from Max Ernst’s distortions of reality, Joan Miró’s “childishness,” or Wolfgang Paalen’s “linear, morbid synthesis,” Vieira suggests that Grassmann’s work is closely aligned with Flemish printmaking tradition and imaginary figurations. Originally published in HABITAT magazine, the article was illustrated with Grassmann’s woodcut prints from the early 1950s, including Incubos e súcubos, Os reis magos, and Harpias. 

[See other articles by the author in the ICAA digital archive, as follows: “A arte ‘ingênua’” (doc. no. 1110356); “Bienal, passarela de gênios” (doc. no. 1110907); “O contingente brasileiro na 3a Bienal de arte de São Paulo: preámbulo necessário” (doc. no. 1110833); “O dilema figuração-abstração” (doc. no. 1110841); “Exposição Nacional de Arte Concreta” (doc. no. 1087109); “Genaro de Carvalho” (doc. no. 1110697); “IV Bienal do Museu de Arte Moderna” (doc. no. 1232311); “Livio Abramo e a macumba fluminense” (doc. no. 1110609); “Mário Cravo” (doc. no. 1110465); “Materiais insólitos, desde o dadaísmo até a pop-art” (doc. no. 1110837); and “Nas artes plásticas” (doc. no. 1110853)].