Livio Abramo

Infobox musical artist
Name = Livio Abramo


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Birth_name = Livio Abramo
Alias =
Born = birth date|1903|06|23
Sao Paulo, Br
Died = death date and age|1993|04|26|1903|06|23|
Asuncion, Paraguay
Genre =
Occupation = Drawer, Painter
Movement = Impresionist
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The notorious sketcher, engraver and aquarellist talks of himself: “I was born June 23, 1903 in Araraquara, Sao Paulo State, Brazil, and son of Italian parents. My father was a liberal in every mean and the father of my father was an anarchist. Those conditions marked permanently my position and the one of my brothers, about the life…”

Although he was born in Brazil, he adopted Paraguay as his nation and it was in this country were he developed the mature stage of a work considered today around the world as emblematic.

The quotation above belongs to the presentation of the exposition “Etapas de un itinerario: grabados, dibujos, acuarelas de Livio Abramo” (Phases of an Itinerary: Engraves, Drawing and Aquarelles From Livio Abramo). In that autobiographic book, the great Brazilian artist also says: “I am drawer, engraver and express the painting using aquarelles. I am entirely autodidactic in the arts. My first engraves and designs coincided with my political and social activities, and have a sharp and expressionist profile.”

Beginnings

After obtaining the major prize of engrave in 1950 he traveled for almost two years to Europe accompanied by his daughter Larissa and visited the most renamed European museums.

He was a journalist for 33 years so he intercalated his artistic activities with his journalistic and syndical activities. It was also because of that, he went to jail many times.

“I don’t see the art as a profession but as human quality, just like the beauty of a waterfall, just like the flight of the birds…” he said.

About his own work, in the same catalog mentioned above he says: “And if it is as the saying goes ‘remembering is to live again’, there is a part of my memories that took artistic form”.About his artistic style, he said: “It’s been said that I’m an exponent of the Brazilian ‘fantastic realism’. Actually, never –except for very brief moments on my artistic beginnings– I have been worried about labeling. I believe that I belong to the great current of artists that from the prehistoric time to the present have used the nature as inspiration.”

Trajectory

Other relevant facts of his artistic personality

Legacy

His engraves can be found at the British Museum of London, the Museum of the Vatican, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Riverside Museum, the Philadelphia Museum, The National Library of the Louvre in Paris, the Modern Arts Museums of Sao Paulo and Río de Janeiro, the Visual Arts Center in Asunción, and also in numerous private collections.

Last years

Admired for his extraordinary humility, his essentially human treatment with others and his kindness, the rightness and clearness of his thoughts, the thoroughness in the training of many fundamental artists of Paraguayan contemporary visual arts, and considered with justice as one of the renovators of the xylographic language of the XX century. Died in Asunción, the capital of the country that gave him his best years, April 26, 1992, a few months before turning 89 years old.

Work

In another part of the already mentioned biography, Abramo says: “Such memories reunite some of my very first work done as an adult (the works of my first youth, around 200, I’ve lost almost all of them) in the ’30, followed by the series portraits of my kids, of María, mi first and deceased wife, as later one of Dora, mi actual mate”.

Follow the studies about Brazilian nature: “Itapecerica”, “Capos de Jordao” (Fields of Jordao), and others, of eclectic subject. After that, comes the series “Obrero” (Worker) and “Guerra civil española” (Spanish Civil War) and after many years we found the xylo-engrave series made in 1948 to illustrate the book “Pelo sertao” from the Brazilian writer Alfonso Arinos.

In the next three years (1949, 1950 and 1951) I’ve dedicated entirely to design. Belong to this phase the designs and water colors about “Río de Janeiro”, “Macumba” and “Negritude” subjects, in which I tried to show the charm of the Carioca city and the figure of “Dina”, the fascination of the black beauty.

With my first and brief visit to Asunción in 1956 begins the “Paraguayan phase”, a phase that has not finished yet... Such itinerary focuses on diverse subjects: The nature show and the human show. In all my years of artistic work I always avoided the typical, the anecdotic and especially the picturesque.

References

* [http://www.cabildoccr.gov.py/index.php?pagina=vernovedades&idnovedad=4 Centro Cultural de la República.]
*Diccionario Biográfico "FORJADORES DEL PARAGUAY", Primera Edición Enero de 2000. Distribuidora Quevedo de Ediciones. Buenos Aires, Argentina.
* EVP - Wikipedia
* [http://www.evp.edu.py/index.php?title=Portada Enciclopedia Virtual Paraguaya - Portal]

External links

* [http://www.neike.com.py/articulo.php?id=1101 Neike]
* [http://www.ppn.com.py/html/noticias/noticia-ver.asp?id=18492 PPN]
* [http://www.vivaparaguay.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=57427 Viva Paraguay]