Art naif is very colourful!

Photo: Dolores Rey-Vicario

This history of Brazil has been drawn by amateur painters and street artists. They do not pay much attention to techniques, proportions or art currents. They do pay attention to colours, rhythms and smells, which are, in my opinion, the best categories of words to describe Brazil. The absorption of these senses by artists has provided colourful paintings, which are classified as art Naïf (Naïve art). The MIAN is the Brazilian International Museum of Art Naif and presents a big collection of this type of art.

Dark night with bright lights

Photo: Antonio Ioris

 

Eleven million people live in Sao Paulo, Brazil and this is more than the Portuguese population (10.5 million). Such a big city require a fair amount of resources to survive: water, food, energy... If one of these fail there might be a conflict. Water scarcity caused by the lack of rain in the summer triggered a series of adverts on TV on how to best save water at work and at home. This measures intended to avoid water rationing in case the drought was to persist. I was surprised to see that little actions, which I considered basic and which I learnt at primary school in my "prone to drought country", where not yet embedded in a society where 9 million people depend of one only catchment: the "Cantareira reservoir system". Household water use was not the only activity at risk due to drought. The newspapers described that coffee production was going to decrease between 15-20% in Sao Paulo state in 2015. If we can survive without coffee, other products are more necessary, and the production of these are also at risk. Water scarcity and government corruption originated something called "panelaco" - people came to their balconies to beat cooking pans in protest. Let's hope the "panelaco" will be the worst consequence. 

 

For more info, the guardian published an interesting article about the recent drought in Sao Paulo: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/feb/11/brazil-drought-ngo-alliance-50-ngos-saving-water-collapse

 

And, thanks to Antonio, I have this beautiful picture from Avenida Paulista, in Sao Paulo. For a photography lover, it is a torture to travel without a camera. But I found it very liberator as it allowed me to focus more on smells and sounds, and it trained my brain to memorise every image. An experience I definitely advise.