Glauco Rodrigues was born in Bagé, in Rio Grande do Sul, and started as a self-taught artist, producing mostly abstract works. In 1960, he participated in IX Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna [National Saloon of Modern Art], when he obtained an award that allowed him to travel to Europe. He participated in the Paris Biennale and, by invitation from the Brazilian Embassy, lived in Rome between the years 1962 and 1965, where he had the opportunity to participate in the XXXII Venice Biennale.
Glauco’s pathway was similar to some od Brazilian Modernist artists, such as Tarsila do Amaral, but it was through Pop Art that he began his return to the figure, at the same time, anthropophagically, telling his visual history of Brazil.
Upon his return to Brazil, Glauco started to revisit, in an iconoclastic way, classic Brazilian works such as O Derrubador Brasileiro - D'après Pedro Américo, Victor Meirelles, Almeida Júnior and Pedro Moraes (1970), a painting that reveals, as Lilia Moritz Schwarcz writes the “facets and expectations of a country that wants to see itself as a pioneer and likes to represent itself on the basis of (false) tolerance and a supposed (and illusory) pacifism.”
Themes attributed to national identity - tropical nature, Christ the Redeemer, carnival, women in bikinis, Indigenous people, Black people, Saint Sebastian, soccer, tales - share space with scenes taken from the history of Brazil, such as the Indian in the work Menino Txucarramãe (1974) and the tropical fruit represented by papaya in Nave do Destino (1969), both paintings in which the figures are arranged on Glauco's white painted background.
The anthropophagic process leads Glauco to translate and swallow Brazil through his paintings, often accompanied by critical phrases - a striking aspect in his body of work - as in Persona [from the series Accuratissima Brasiliae Tabula] (1974) a clear representation of the critic colonialism and the exploitation of the territory and indigenous population by the white man, and A Vontade das Circunstâncias [from the Economês series] (1972) in which he paints the phrases: "The export race will congenitally carry a risk of perpetuation of poor income distribution" and "Exporters of raw materials and industrialized products that incorporate the 'advantages' of extensive use of cheap labor".
Glauco impregnates in his works a kind of carnivalization of Brazilian culture, with the use of tropical colors such as green, yellow and blue, which carry, at the same time, humor and social criticism, as in the work that lends the title of this exhibition, Porém, Acontece, Que Somos Canibais! [da série Visão da Terra - A Lenda do Coati-Puru] (1977). Inspired by the Coati-Puru Tale[1], Glauco produced emblematic works creating an analogy to the illusion of progress during the military dictatorship called “Brazilian miracle”, which is also present in the work Nossa Comida Abundando Está! No. 1 (1977).
The relevance and timelessness of Glauco Rodrigues' work, where Brazilian life themes and myths parade, is narrated by Frederico Morais as a work in which "Everything is cannibalized, swallowed, then expelled as a colorful explosion, a visual delirium", and becomes even more meaningful in the current Brazilian political-social context.
In Lilia Moritz Schwarcz’s essay, she reiterates: “in such dystopian times in which we live, when reality seems exaggerated and surreal (but unfortunately is not), when politics becomes an easy spectacle of authoritarianism, where green and yellow have been kidnapped from an important part of the population, Glauco's subtle irony may finally be at home and pertaining to present times. This time in standby which presents itself in the form of a present without a future.”
And she concludes: “The green and the yellow are us! Everything in his work is anthropophagic art, in the sense given by the Amerindian peoples who make food a ritual of exchange and swallowing, without a certain geography or a delimited time. Everything must be digested and vomited, in a celebration of Brazilian culture that devours the "others," but also itself and "us." This is because "we happen to be cannibals" - green and yellow, and tropical.”
[1] The Coati-Puru Tale says that the Caxinauás Indians were starving and even eating soil to survive, when a Coati with magical powers arrives at their village. Through an enchantment it turns into a man and creates the illusion that the Indigenous are eating vegetables and fruits. Euphoria takes over the tribe and the only person who knows the truth is Mulher-Sozinha [Lonely Woman], who remains silent. The Coati then becomes the leader of the village and this power goes to his head. One day, feeling challenged, he orders to castrate the husband of the Mulher-Sozinha, who revolts by revealing the tribe everything. Cornered, Coati runs away taking his enchantments, vegetables and fruits, and the tribe once again lives in misery.