The Embassy of Brazil and the Goethe Institute promoted the exhibition “Soul traces” of plastic arts of the Brazilian artist Gustavo da Liña, started from 5th May till 15th May 2009, at the Goethe Institute. The inauguration took place on Tuesday, 5th May.
Profile of the Brazilian Artist
Gustavo da Liña, a Brazilian artist born 1961 in Rio Grande do Sul, lives in Berlin since 1989, where he witnessed the fall of the Wall. He has won a greater recognition abroad, through many expositions in different countries of the world. In his creative style, he uses mainly Antaimoro paper, a hand made material produced in Madagascar, from a tree named Avoha. To this texture, he adds pigments and different geometric forms, in harmony with intense colours, composing squares, circles, bars, clefs or labyrinths,
suggesting archaic symbols of human soul.
As his own artistic name, da Liña or Linha, in Portuguese meaning line, the artist’s pictures, physical and concrete, combining ancient and old traditions with contemporary characteristics, establish a kind of track of signs between Brazil, Germany and Africa, in a synthesis between materiality and spirituality.
On the occasion, the Ambassador of Brazil, Mr. Luis Fernando Serra, made the following speech:
“First of all, I’d like to thank you for coming. I appreciate your effort to challenge the inconvenience of the heavy traffic and be on time for this gathering. Let me also acknowledge the tremendous commitment of the Goethe Institut to set up this art exhibition which is the first I present since I took office as Ambassador almost three years ago.
During this period, I thought it was a good idea to present in this prestigious venue the works of a Brazilian Artist who had some link with Africa. I made exhaustive research and came across the name of Gustavo da Linha. Gustavo brings together three important elements that, in my opinion,qualify him for the job: he is Brazilian, born close to the border with Uruguay, and that is the reason for his artistic name (da Linha is the translation for from the border), he has been living in Berlin for the last twenty years, and so his attachment to what the Goethe Institut represents is out of question, and he paints on a paper manufactured only in Africa in a small community north of Madagascar. Because of that I can say that Gustavo champions a product that, besides being the pride of the whole continent, can disappear in twenty years if nothing is done to preserve the
technique mastered only by the elders of that village.
I said that he lives in Berlin since 1989, but he goes every six month to Brazil in search of this Brazilian spirituality that he doesn’t want to lose. Gustavo, with his unique artistic experience, doesn’t paint landscapes, still nature, faces or bodies. He doesn’t either freeze, on his canvass made of that fabulous paper, moments of human situations. Rather, he
dives deep in the labyrinths of our soul, and, in a language which is universal, captures the turbulences of our secret gardens. In other words, he invites us to meditate on the transcendent meaning of our life. Enjoy the exhibition.
Thank you”.
