There is one decade, in fact, he died
in Rio de Janeiro, in the psychiatric hospital Juliano Moreira, the afro-brazilian Arthur
Bispo do Rosário. Neither fear nor reserve, is for me considered the largest and more
genuine Brazilian artist. Any other one went so deep in to its personal research. Any
other one was so universal, so limitless and sacred. In time: Bispo didn't sculpt saints,
it didn't decorate churches, nor he never worked with any ink species, screens or easels.
The matter excels of its work it brought to an agreement of the garbage picked up in the
hospital, scraps and cloth rags that were frayed and later on used in its embroideries.
Arthur Bispo do Rosário was, between other things, an embroiderer of
works cousins. It passed more of the half of its life confined in Juliano Moreira,
mummifying its personal objects: toothbrush, tableware, scissors, etc. The madness of
Arthur Bispo do Rosário don't fit in a simple dissertation, it is necessary to come
across with its vast work to have the dimension of who was Arthur Bispo of Rosário. He
was an artist obsessed by chess game, misses and geography; an artist that, with its
thirst of registrations, it extrapolated the dimensions of the painting and it created
fantastic shop windows with glasses of aluminum, combs of plastics and varied objects.
Created by a rich family, in Botafogo district it was, when young,
sailor and boxing fighter. Certain day received a message of God: it was the beginning of
its mental unbalance. Interned, him soon sheriff was entitled and you started to beat in
the companions. It was recluse in a solitary one, where it passed great part of its life.
Second Bispo, God had asked it that "Reconstructed the universe" and "it
registered its passage here in the earth". During half century, he didn't make
another thing. For him, its work was a desire of God, but for Morais’ critical
Frederico, that introduced it to the world, everything didn't pass of the most genuine
art.
In Belo Horizonte City, it was created a Center of Coexistence that
takes its name. In a certain way, it is an extension, in what it concerns to the
treatment, of the Hospital Pedro II, where the well happened Museum of the Unconscious
exists. In both cases, the patients develop artistic practices and the results are
surprising. It proves of this, it is the exhibition that takes place at the Fair of Craft
in Belo Horizonte City.
Today the name of Arthur Bispo do Rosário already attained all over the
word. The Europeans became enchanted and, ever since, they reverence it. Its exhibition
visited the main capitals of the world. In one of its mantles, Arthur Bispo do Rosário
embroidered the women's name that they would be saved, for him, in the Final Judgement.
This mantle should accompany it in the ascent to the skies, whose desire was not assisted.
All the main concepts and followings of modern art are contained in its work. It is
necessary to observe that Bispo, being internal, it was alienated of the world and that
its originality is unanswerable. When, in life, they wanted to expose its works, he was
emphatic: "I don't make this for the men, but for God".