Art@Site www.artatsite.com Amilcar de Castro Sem Titulo Rio de Janeiro
Artist:

Amilcar de Castro

Title:

Sem Titulo

Year:
1996
Adress:
Leblon
Website:
perfection and beauty
What makes that we find an abstract artwork beautiful? By Sem Titulo by Amilcar de Castro beauty is first of all perfection, to me.
I can image myself in front of the artwork and follow with my eyes along the lines and surfaces slowely. There are sharp and obtuse angles, wide and narrow surfaces. The lines and surfaces slide behind each other.
I feel a delight by the beauty of the lines and surfaces. Also, I feel a tension between the visible and the hidden; is it correct that the line and the suface are going through? I would like to walk around it.
I image that I walk around this artwork. It is because I have seen similar artworks, so memories about these come into my mind. I have pleasant memories of beauty. I’m good with this. Yes, perfection can call for the excitement of beauty.
By Theo, www.artatsite.com

Vertaling
perfectie en schoonheid
Wat maakt dat een abstract kunstwerk mooi gevonden wordt? Bij Sem Titulo van Amilcar de Castro is schoonheid voor mij allereerst perfectie.
Ik beeld mij in dat ik voor het kunstwerk sta en mijn ogen lange tijd langs de lijnen en vlakken laat gaan. Er zijn scherpe en stompe hoeken, brede en smalle vlakken. De lijnen en vlakken schuiven achter elkaar.
Ik voel een streling door de schoonheid van de lijnen en de vlakken. Ook voel ik een spanning tussen zichtbaar en verborgen; zou het kloppen dat de lijn en het vlak doorlopen? Ik wil er graag omheen lopen.
Ik stel mij voor dat ik rondom het kunstwerk loop. Doordat ik vergelijkbare kunstwerken heb gezien, komen er herinneringen bij mij boven. Plezierige herinneringen aan schoonheid. Daar doe ik het voor.
Jah, perfectie kan de sensatie van schoonheid oproepen.
Door Theo, www.artatsite.com

www.inventariodosmonumentosrj.com.br:
A escultura utiliza a técnica corta e dobra, criando formas no espaço para ser vista de vários angulos.
A Escultura foi inicalmente instalada na Travessa das Belas Artes, no Centro do Rio. É uma réplica de uma escultura premiada em 1953, na Bienal de Sào Paulo. Por iniciativa do filho do artista, Rodrigo de Castro, e parceria entre o Instituto Amà­lcar de Castro e a prefeitura, a escultura foi transferida para o Leblon em setembro de 2012.
Em aço SAC 41, com 2 ( dois) metros de altura e 3 ( três) de largura, pesa 2 toneladas.
Translation: The sculpture uses the cut and fold technique, creating shapes in the space to be view from various angles.
The Sculpture was initially installed at Travessa das Belas Artes, in downtown Rio. It is a replica of a sculpture awarded in 1953, at the Bienal de Sào Paulo. At the initiative of the artist's son, Rodrigo de Castro, and in partnership between the Instituto Amà­lcar de Castro and the city hall, the ss transferred to Leblon in September 2012.
In SAC 41 steel, 2 (two) meters high and 3 (three) wide, it weighs 2 tons.

www.artreview.com:
Two cuts have been made, forming an acute angle in a circular slab of steel 80 cm in diameter and some 5 cm thick, with the resulting triangle bent away from the disc. In a pas de deux between hard metal and thin air, the sculpture morphs through dozens of unexpected shapes as you circle it. '˜I want to show the space that has not yet been seen', wrote de Castro, in an undated poem reproduced in the 2010 book Amilcar de Castro. '˜Reinventing space in wonder and without fanfare / But which is new, always new.'
In a 2002 interview with the art historian Marà­lia Andrés Ribeiro, de Castro described how he first sketched, then modelled his cut-and-fold sculptures in paper. If he liked the result, he would create a small version in metal; and if he liked that, he would increase the size. '˜At first we used a huge metal folding machine,' de Castro extoday we are able to do it without a machine. The plate is placed on top of a rack, and the area of support is heated. The weight of the plate causes it to bend at the same angle as the rack.'
De Castro bestowed an intimate, gestural quality on the geometric shapes he was painting, or '˜drawing', as he insisted on referring to his practice. Using an eclectic collection of domestic and industrial brushes and brooms, he produced single, continuous movements over and over again, looking for the shapes that pleased him and discarding the rest.

www.ricardofernandes.biz:
Amilcar de Castro: 'What determinates an artist is if he looks inside himself. Every experience is a self-experience in art; it's the experience of oneself in a personal research. You cannot experiment the other. This internal silence looking for the origin of things is the big problem in art. Looking for the source you become unique, and not wanting to do anything different than that. That's why I think that creating goes togwith living. Art and life are the same thing.'
Ricardo Chaves Fernandes: 'The work of the sculptor Amilcar de Castro has influenced a complete generation from the fifities to nowadays. The artist has always defended the importance of the creation process and the power of creating art from an introspective point of view, translating the personality of the artist into original creativity and giving the artwork a personal concept and meaning. He also wanted to break away the European classic spectrum of art developing a Brazilian local art.'

www.wikipedia.org:
Amà­lcar Augusto Pereira de Castro (6 June 1920 '' 21 November 2002) was a Brazilian artist, sculptor and graphic designer.
Moving to Rio de Janeiro in 1953 de Castro began his career as a graphic designer with the magazin"Manchete" and "A Cigarra." He carried out the graphic redesign of the Jornal do Brasil newspaper in 1957-1959. In the sixties, though he was increasingly artistically more focused on sculpture, he undertook graphic design for several other Brazilian newspapers as well as working as a book designer for the publisher Editora Vozes.
From the 1960s he focused on sculpture and '' alongside Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape and Helio Oiticica '' was one of the leading figures of the Brazilian neo-constructivist movement.
After receiving a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation and "Foreign Travel" prize at the 15th National Salon for Modern Art in 1957 he travelled to the United States, basing himself in New Jersey. In 1971 he returned to Belo Horizonte dedicating himself to artistic and educational activities. He directed the Escola Guignard Foundation from 1974-77 where he taught "bidimensional and tridimensional expression." He was Professor of Sculpture at the UFMG School of Fine Arts from 1979''90 and of Sculpture at the Art Foundation of Ouro Preto-FAOP in 1979.
De Castro is particularly famous for large, bold simple iron forms nearly always characterized by a design based o"one cut, one fold." His method can be linked both to his earlier work with graphic design and paper, and to the mining heritage of his home state of Minas Gerais.
De Castro did not just produce steel sculptures, he also used wood, marble and glass. Reflecting his training under Alberto de Guignard and his work as a graphic designer, he also produced thousands of graphic works, drawings prints and large scale paintings, as well as objects and jewelry.

www.worldcat.org:
65 Works in 112 publications in 4 languages and 489 library holdings.