Marcello Grassmann

At the beginning of his career, his contact with the work of Oswaldo Goeldi (1895-1961) and also with that of Lívio Abramo (1903-1992) stood out. In his first woodcuts there are arabesques and dotted lines obtained from the top wood. In 1949, he produced the series Night Knights, with military figures in black, cut out on a white background. Later, fantastic figures appeared in his themes, such as mermaids, harpies (fabulous monsters with the face of a woman and the body of a bird), small demons, horses, fish, beings that were partly human and partly animal, related to a magical universe. He began to use lithographs, in which his drawings were more fluent. For the critic Aracy Amaral (1930), after work of a more expressionist nature at the beginning of his career, Grassmann began to explore the mythical and fantastic universe. The artist frequently resorted to motifs linked to medieval and Renaissance imagery. Throughout his career, he has been interested in art history and mythology. As the artist points out, his work has as references the beings created by the painter Hieronymus Bosch (ca.1450-1516) and the work of Alfred Kubin (1877-1959), with whom he came into contact during his stay in Vienna. The artist combines an extremely rich graphic symbolism with a very personal and refined technique. For Lívio Abramo "Between the complex inner world of the artist and the plastic realization is a short path: complicated arabesques, strange symbioses of human beings and animals, metamorphoses revealing desires and anguish, poetic sense and great formal freedom ...". One of the most respected Brazilian engravers, Marcelo Grassmann reveals a profound knowledge of graphic means and techniques. source: enciclopedia Itau Cultural

Por: Galeria Gravura Brasileira