THE SORCERER OF COLOR

The sorcerer of colors.

Pio-Carlos Carrijo Roda began to paint early in his life. One of his first paintings "Adeus aas Armas" (Good-bye to weapons) shows a boy. The boy is docile, poor and uses very simple clothes. On the first view, he has the appearance of the end of the last century's figures, but, better observing, by the manner he is dressed, he is current: with jeans pants and cap, like the teens of the present time.

And why did I judge him a "past figure?"

He reminds to me the humble boys of the Romanticism; light pink colored shirt with stains and tear. The no dressed up pants, almost shred, are old blue jeans; The cap protects his sad eyes against the sun. HIs long arms are skinny. His right hand hangs a flute which looks like a transverse flute. The background of this painting is gray-blue on the top and dark green on bottom and suggests vegetation. The boy plays flute on the quite like somebody is crying. He is sad, solitary and seems a person that is hidden from himself. Total introspection and centered on his own thoughts. Just exist the boy and the world - the poor world which causes discourage in sensitive beings.

I can't disassociate the creature from his creator. who knows, in his evolution phase, Pio had long wings and by the fatality of his destiny he passed by us. For sure he keeps a kind of astonishment air, of insurmountable shock and not temporal. From the child he almost always was, became a teen; I almost said an adult, but it will take long time.

By his knowledge of the world, he has been dazzled with the colors. He became a slave of it. He burst into painting everything around himself. When he created the creature of the painting above, in the beginning, he was portraying his own soul: gentle and suffering, complete of simplicity, still not polluted by the shocks and disappointments of life. He is the only surviving of the inhabitant of the "Theory of Ideas" of PLATO, that lived in total contemplation of the beauty in the atmosphere of happiness, before of the act of his birth. In that abstract remote world had been in essence all kind of beings, things and objects that were coming to be materialized and arranged the Universe, before the initial terror of Cosmos.

Pio learned the classics of European and Brazilian visual arts and made a tour by all of those. Son of Niteroi (a Brazilian city), considerable nest of good painters, he shows the air that inhale from that bucolic and pleasant city. With good drawing and exact idea of the use of colors, with lightness and wisdom, he shows landscapes, vases with flowers in good taste in the arrangement and hot colors. The most notable, on those gardens, is how he abandoned the secular use of backgrounds in still lives and harmonized it with squares and rectangles juxtaposed. This melting of the second level on the canvases with single flowers on the first level gave to us the result of a well done breeding, pleasant to our eyes, even if it has commonplace and traditional objects, like teapots and plates with fruits.

I have to point out that Pio spent a long time of his short life cloistered in himself, by his temperament. The great success of his career was "The Condominium," colorful houses with many trees around. Everything limited by walls. It made me remember "HOLDEN," the fictional boy whose infancy was very unhappy, really not understood. he desired to grow and build one big prairie, like a big tray, where the four sides of the quadrilateral ended in immense abysses. Maybe it was supported by imaginary columns, like the thought of the primitive philosophers, who wanted to create the theory of the shape of the Planet Earth. That prairie was going to be covered by rye, where got together many small children and the only adult was HOLDEN. His purpose was to provide happiness to the inhabitants without the evil of the adults.

The children could play and run free. Because of their innocence and freedom, some could run to the abyss. At this time, HOLDEN, like in "The Gather of the Rye Camp" appeared at a dangerous moment and prevented the fall of those children.

THE HOUSES ENCLOSURE BY WALLS DISPENSED THE "PIO-GATHER ON THE RYE CAMP."

At the time of those "condominium," success of sale, He was tired of the sameness. Could it be his own desire?

He abandoned "The Condominium."

He liberated himself. He began to make big, very big leaves, without vases and teapots or surrounding houses by walls. Those big leaves, very colored with splendid texture was the biggest and best exercise of colors, although the autumn leaves were predominant, there were, also, green leaves, red ones, blue, yellow, brown, orange and more and more.

After the exuberance of color and texture our painter began to drive in muddy water. I saw paintings of the next inter-phase. I just remind that the focus of interest of each one was the entangle of black and large lines, looking like letters of the Japanese alphabet. I believe in that time when He was making those entangles of Japanese letters Pio hated the utopian houses inside of the imaginary condominium. With unstable spirit and he was not coming in terms with what he painted years ago, what made He jump from the canvas. The skinny boy, docile and lonely was courageous, He abandoned the old captivity and said: 'LOOK, I AM HERE." His eyes we re brilliant. Drove away the timidity, the fear and was just audacity and challenge.

He needed to end up the past. Good-bye colored paints. Tood-bye houses and conventional landscapes, flowers and fruits with exhausted and tired forms.

HE NEEDE NEW MATERIAL TO BUILD THE NEW AND REVOLUTIONARY. IBSEN, the big Scandinavian dramatist thought that our civilization just could evolve if it built everything again: people, animals, birds, .... In his thoughts the revolution had to be total with the end of everything. The only revolution that was close to that reality was the Deluge; but it failed because of Noah's care. When he built the ark, he sheltered a couple of each kind of anima;, he failed the total destruction, and IBSEN said: "I could bombarded the Noah's ark."

It had to be like this. Pio, now Pius, detonated the pictorial past, to begin the new tomorrow without yesterday in his paintings. He decided to discover the new painting, which shyly liberate him from its subject. He went to find it. The worry about movement belongs to spirits in constant boil. And, his boiled spirit like one volcano exploded in the fire, scalded lava and light grew to the sky, dripped on earth and became mud and deadly and black matter, and ashes, horrifying, dropping to the ocean, destroying everything on it way.

Almost on the moment of his explosion, of the violent eruption like happen on ETNAS of life, after centuries of quiet and resign, one day, annoyed bored by the stagnation, by the absence of flavor in life, by the fake resignation, EXPLODED. In his evolve and devastated march he drags powerful and unshakeable stones, reaching his pictorial orgasm - it is up-to-date the orgasm word, how itself, the word didn't know its meaning, for long time hidden by the bashful, almost forgotten, poor thing!

Pius has to discover the new paint and new method to express what is in his mind: leave the hot and vibrant color and adopt is own hue of colors. Like a vagabond whose plays on the quiet. The silence and imponderable from the deep water, full of mystery and surprises - " I opted to work with one kind of trash - the used oil for automobiles, like agglutinate." The man who dive in muddy water, disappointed and dirty, uses the adjective agglutinate for for his trash of oil missed and not useful. This man isn't the missed in muddy water, he is the unifying of the beauty.

When he mixed his dark oil, repulsive, slimy, abject, he was realizing his catharsis.

Abdicate the clean color, the tenuous chord, symbolically his body dived in abominated world of darkness, while his pure sensitive translucent soul win the fear, the vomit, the nausea. And, from this tragedy dived to the unconscious, was born his most authentic and beautiful canvas. This dive is the same as the myth of the Pascal Cave: Each human being had to travel pure through the darkness of his soul like was diving into his past.

PIUS DOESN'T LOOK FOR THE BEAUTY OF HIS PAINTINGS BUT THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PAINTING. HOW CAN HE TRANSFORM THE DIRTY, THE BLACK IN SOMETHING THAT DESERVED TO BE LOOKED, RESERACHED, UNDERSTOOD AND IF POSSIBLE, BELOVED.

THIS WAS PIUS RODAMANO'S DILEMMA: THE NEW PAINTING.

Claudio Gil

Professor and Art Expert.

PS.

- Pius' messages on each painting (title of the paintings) will help the spectators to understand, but kill somehow the mystery and surprise. The spectators were going to spend more time in front of each painting looking for the key of comprehension.

- My wish of contribution to explain this enigma.

Remind to me "The learner of Sorcerer", symphonic poem transformed into cartoon:

One young person, tired to listen about the secrets of the unfathomable of the dark night, about witch and witchcrafts, about winged brooms decided to learn all about the subject.

After years of learning, some day felt fit to be tested by professional competence test and faced the strong knowledge of his masters. They on top of their thrones, big chairs on upper level. The fierce masters started to test the knowledge of the sorcerer applicant.

With very transcendence questions the masters started to show that the applicant didn't know anything about magic.

When they rose the level of the questions, the ambition and enthusiasm of the young man were getting down.

The result was a big failure.

The young learner looked to the master and stammered: "I recognize that I don't know anything about witchcraft but I would love to be a sorcerer."

- About myself, I hope this has been useful an attempt to show the new face of the visual arts, and also hope that lovers and not lovers of the paintings contemplate and try to discover the key for the entry door of this new mystery, which is the work of art of Pius Rodamano.

- If happen the best, the desired, the expected, he and I will feel ourselves rewarded.

-In case it doesn't happen, you can be sure of, at least, on this moment, the artist learner apologize and say: "i would love to be understood, just this, be understood...

- And, I, dear Pius, would like to write one text equal to your merits and great as your paintings.

Claudio Gil

Rio de Janeiro, September 1998.

* Text translated from Portuguese into English

* Pio C. C. Roda signed his works of art as Pio Roda until the phase above when he started to use the artistic name Pius Rodamano.