/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/ART-BRAZIL: Environmentalist Passion Feeds Creations

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 28 2000 (IPS) - Outrage about environmental destruction is evident in Brazilian artist Franz Krajcberg’s exceptional sculptures of burnt wood and twisted branches, taken to the point of near obsession by this World War II survivor.

Originally a painter of abstracts, Krajcberg began to incorporate natural materials into his works when he lived in a mining region of Minas Gerais state in the 1950s. Mineral pigments, leaves, roots and wood eventually led him away from painting and the limits of the frame.

The large sculptures that earned him renown reveal the destruction of nature through dramatically twisted roots and branches, signs of burning and other human aggressions.

An isolated life, a traumatic past and a love of the forest explain Krajcberg’s choice of theme and style, and his subsequent environmental activism. “It is indignation in its purest form,” says his friend and art critic Frederico de Moraes.

Krajcberg recently released two books, “Revolta,” a partial inventory of his paintings and sculptures, and “Natura,” a collection of 200 photographs he made during several tours through the Brazilian interior. The destruction of nature is the common – and obsessive – thread.

Krajcberg, who is Jewish, was born in Poland 79 years ago. His entire family was murdered in the Nazi concentration camps. He fought the Germans as a soldier for the Soviet army in World War II.

In 1948, he migrated to Brazil, where he lived a difficult life, at times without a home, working in construction until he achieved recognition as an artist by winning awards at the Sao Paulo and Venice biennials in the 1960s.

Tormented by the war and his personal losses, he is given to repeat that Brazil’s natural wealth was his “salvation,” its beauty helped him survive.

This love only deepened his trauma when he saw environmental devastation first-hand: a “queimada” or burning – the intentional torching of forests to prepare the land for cultivation or livestock. It is like the continuation of war, he said.

Alone, he went to live in Nova Vizosa in 1972, a small coastal city in Bahía state, where he built his house in a tree. Growing international recognition brought in more money for his artwork, allowing him to have a house and studio in Paris as well.

His commitment to the natural environment is blended with his art, but surpasses it, Krajcberg has said. He maintains that the primary objective of his work is to denounce “the assassination of nature by man,” a goal he considers much more important than beauty.

The artist’s rebelliousness is also manifest on other fronts. Last year he had decided to allow Brazil’s customs authorities to destroy the artwork he had taken to a show in Paris. He did so in protest of being charged duty payments at the port.

“I do not accept extortion,” he justified, and prevented even his friends from paying the “undue” charges. His protest helped speed up legislation – demanded by artists for years – which exempts cultural goods from tariffs when they return to the country of origin.

He eventually won the release of his works, free of charge, though it was many months later.

The book of photos, with commentary from art critics and several academics, reveals Krajcberg’s passionate gaze over the exuberant forests and landscapes of Brazil, especially the Amazon regions and the Mato Grosso Pantanal in the nation’s west.

But his indignant stare is also evident when it comes to burned forests, “nature defeated.”

The photos he made as an environmental activist are reminiscent of those by fellow Brazilian, Sebastiao Salgado, a photographer known for capturing the world’s social dramas. Salgado has two books coming out next month and an exhibition on the war refugees and ethnic and religious conflicts of 47 countries.

One of the books, “Exodus,” depicts fleeing families who are living in the worst imaginable physical and psychological conditions. The other, “Portraits of the Children of Exodus,” reflects the toll of war on childhood. Salgado points out that there are 130 million refugees in the world today, more than seven times the total in 1985.