MASP

Heitor dos Prazeres began his work as painter in the late 1930s, when he was in his forties and had already some recognition as a musician and composer of samba in Rio de Janeiro, besides being one of the founding members of the Portela samba school. He represented many of the places he used to go to, like gafieira balls, bohemian bars, Carnival groups, and Candomblé yards. His work is full of rhythm, suggested by the moving bodies—usually represented dancing or entranced in spaces that resemble theatrical settings—as well as the alternation and contrast of intense colors applied homogeneously, without variations of luminosity. Being a self-taught painter and also due to his visual repertoire, Prazeres was often characterized as a Naïf artist. However, such appellation seems to overshadow the complexity and aspect of his work, with attention to details like the hair strands and buttons in O artista. It is actually a profile portrait of a black man whose grizzly beard and hair bespeak a certain age. He smokes a pipe, a recurring object in representations of Pretos-Velhos, wise entities in Afro-Brazilian religions. The red beret, an attribute traditionally associated with artists, reappears in some self-portraits of Heitor dos Prazeres, which seems to be the case of this painting of the MASP collection.

— Olivia Ardui, 2017

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