The I.C.B.I.E. Blog

The great success of last October’s expedition, when ICBIE president Pietro Gallina brought two Salvador city councilmen and our artists Julio and Bigode to Italy, caused the city of Salvador to plan another, even more ambitious, trip, visiting France, Germany, Spain and Italy, following an itinerary meticulously prepared, once again, by Pietro.  This time, he will accompany the city councilman Edvando Luiz Castro Pinto, the photographer José Francisco Paranaguá Guimarães and three Salvador Grafita artists, both to show off the city’s innovative program in support of street art, and to offer the lads an opportunity to absorb the cultural treasures of Europe.

The three fortunate artists are:

• Julio - our wonderful ICBIE artist, and leader of the crew Nova 10Ordem.
• Pinel - an ex-juvenile delinquent who reformed and joined the Salvador Grafita project in 1995, becoming a protagonist of Bahian street art.
• Lee 27 - one of north Brazil’s most famous graffiti artists, a protagonist of Bahian hip-hop culture since 1993, who has worked in Brasilia and São Paulo; his art has been used by Coca-Cola, Johnny Walker and Red Bull, and he has collaborated with UNESCO.

They will depart on the evening of the eleventh of April, arriving in Paris on the twelfth.  On the fourteenth they will travel to Limburg, Germany, where they will be hosted by LahnArtists, the cultural center directed by our great friends Renate Kuby and Steve Whitton.  They will be received by the mayor in city hall and meet with local artists and a famous group of street artists from Wiesbaden.  They will also spend a morning painting the old LahnArtists VW bus!

On the seventeenth they will travel to Marseilles and on the eighteenth they will arrive in Barcelona, where our enthusiastic supporters Celeste and Veronique have organized a big event with local artists at the city’s spectacular Centric Point Hostel.

On April 21st they will fly to Rome, staying until April 24th, when everyone but Pietro and Julio will return to Salvador.

When the news of D’Artagnan’s work at the Museum of Modern Art broke yesterday, it unleashed an real tsunami of enthusiasm across the whole ICBIE community, with a flurry of triumphant and congratulatory emails flying around the globe. In New York, our stalwart friend Mary Norris went straight from work to the museum, to verify the news. Here is her report!

YES! D’Artagnan is there! It is a deep, lush, purple painting, full of his signature trees and veins and leaves and flames and beads and seeds, with a gingerbread house and triplets. And toes, of course. It hangs low, which suits it, because of the toes and because one of the flower shapes in the background (though there is no background, really–that’s one of the things about him) looks like sea anemone, waving. You have to crouch to get a good look at it, and people do. It’s in very good company. On the way in, I saw Saul Steinberg. To D’Artagnan’s left is a Joseph Cornell. There’s a John Currin (hot) and a Basquiat and a Miro and an R. Crumb. I just can’t stop smiling at the thought of D’Artagnan safe in that company.

Thanks for the news, Mary!

A wonderful surprise, ever so often. That’s really what keeps us going, and luckily, the mad ICBIE dream has been sustained by fortuitous luck, which always seems to arrive in the proper, albeit often crucial, moment.

Today’s thunderbolt came from our dear friend Kerry, whose KS Art gallery has managed D’Artagnan’s paintings since 2003.  A D’Artagnan work is now hanging in public display at the Museum of Modern Art!  A new exhibition, ‘Glossolalia: Languages of Drawing,’ organized by Connie Butler (Chief Curator of Drawings for the Robert Lehman Foundation), has opened in the galleries of the museum’s drawing department, and it includes D’Artagnan’s TETRADACTILUS, one of the four works that the MOMA purchased in 2003.

Here is the link to the MOMA website: http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=7823

Ele D’Artagnan inspired the whole ICBIE dream, and his deliriously beautiful art continues to provide us with a banquet of hope.

The responsibilities of running an operation like the ICBIE go beyond the ordinary, that’s for sure.  Just as he was planning to use the relative calm of the Easter season to grab a rare day off for a trip to the beach, ICBIE president Pietro Gallina discovered that a big crack had opened at the back of the wall that runs along Rua Julio David, behind the institute.  Not only could a large and heavy block have broken away, falling onto the busy sidewalk, but it also threatened a main power line.  So instead of basking under the palms, Pietro had to call the electric company and organize a crew of workers to perform the necessary preventative measures, which involved cutting off the electricity, pulling down the compromised hunk of wall, and then repairing the damage.  Just the materials cost €150, including a new pole for the electrical wires.

All of this, and more, in the name of cultural exchange and understanding!

The fact that the ICBIE offers the best Italian instruction in Salvador is no longer a secret. So when a group of fifty-one dancers were recruited by the Italian company Fitness Mare to travel to Italy next summer (where they will perform at various Club Med tourist centers), we were asked to arrange a ten week long cycle of beginning Italian lessons. Seeing as the pay was good, Marlene accepted the challenge, even though it entails traveling to the other side of the city, to Boca do Rio, which is along the eastern seafront (”Orla de Salvador“). Lessons are every Monday and Thursday, from 11 AM to 1 PM.

With Julio and Annie as her assistants, Marlene is using Italian songs to help with her teaching, and the dancers have really taken to some pieces by Tiziano Ferro and Irene Grandi, improvising the choreography and cavorting around in the big concrete hall where the lessons are held.

The fun and games will continue through April and early May.

Many more pictures are posted in this album of the ICBIE Photo Gallery.

February 29th, 2008. Ribeira, Salvador. Today was a very exciting day for the kids at the Minha vo Flor orphanage in Ribeira, Salvador. All the children were in for an unusual treat today, when graffiti artist, and member of the ICBIE staff, Julio Costa arrived with a dozen blocks of paper, and a huge box of colored pencils under his arms. The enthusiasm seemed to burst out of the walls of the orphanage, as Julio explained to them that, from now on, he was going to come by once a week to teach them all the secrets of art he had stored away in his sleeves.

This social project, which was designed to teach the children not only how to draw and make pieces of art of their own, but to widen their cultural horizons, was sponsored by a few teachers from the city of Verbania, Italy. The latter made a very generous donation for art materials, which was immediately put to good use. Julio will be going to teach an art course for several weeks, in which he will try and build the children’s confidence in themselves and their work, and will hopefully put a smile on their faces.

The first lesson this afternoon went surprisingly well, and everyone ranging from age 2 to 15 joined in, clinging to Julio’s every word of advice. He was asked to draw pictures of mermaids and cars – not the usual choice of subject for his art work – for them, which the kids then proudly held up next to their attempt of the same picture. The class progressed rapidly, as the children went from using just one color for the whole picture, to discovering a whole new world of color combinations.

All in all, day # 1 of the project went as well as anyone could have hoped, and everyone at Minha vo Flor is anxiously waiting for next week to come around, so that they can further work on their art skills, and spend some more time with their favorite graffiti artist.

Annie Neumann

It’s hard not to have a soft spot in your heart, when it comes to the Minha vó Flor orphanage. The sight of all the beautiful children would be enough, but then come the wrenching stories from the valiant director Florenice Gomes Macêdo, who has battled for the last eleven years, just to keep things going. For years, her decrepit building has needed restoration, while she dreamed of restructuring, including building a stairway, so as to create another bedroom on the second story.

Fortunately, the network of ICBIE supporters solved her problems. Our founding crusader Yvonne Fluckiger Righi was able to find a R$7000 contribution from a wealthy lady in Switzerland (who wishes to remain anonymous), and the construction work is now well underway. The facade has been restored and repainted, as these pictures show:

New walls have been built, both inside and out:

and the new stairway is under construction:

Thanks to the generosity of one anonymous donor, the children of Minha vó Flor will have a more spacious and more salubrious home. And the ICBIE is proud to have acted as the conduit, the channel for this important assistance.

More photos of the renovation work at Minha vó Flor are posted in the ICBIE Photo Gallery

Salvador’s major daily newspapers gave ample coverage to the inauguration of the Ribeira of the Arts project, announcing the event beforehand, and sending reporters and photographers to document Sunday’s activities.

The reviews applauded the fact that the initiative offered good music, culture and art, not to the usual privileged class of the educated, but to the common people of the cidade baixa. They also appreciated the scope of the project, continuing every month through the year and expanding to involve the entire district, with the city government committed to upgrading parks and buildings to host artistic and cultural fairs.

Both the Correio da Bahia and A Tarde underlined the novelty of offering authentic art of quality without commercializing it, while providing a healthy confrontation and exchange between Bahian and Italian artists. The articles also seized upon the edifying story of Julio and Bigode, who, thanks to the lessons and encounters at the ICBIE, have achieved an international reputation. They also anticipated the exciting news of yet another European tour for three Salvador grafita artists (including Julio, of course!), scheduled for next month.

Here are a few more photos of Sunday’s excitement, with many thanks to our friend José Paranaguà, who, beyond his remarkable gifts as an artist, also excels as a photographer.

For more photos of the big arts fair, go to the new niche in the ICBIE Photo Gallery.