Page 474 - The Secret Museum

ONCE THEY’VE HIT THE BEACH to soak up some sunshine and drunk from a few fresh

coconuts or drunk caipirinhas, one of the first things visitors to Rio de Janiero tend to
do is make the trip to see Christ the Redeemer the most famous symbol of Brazil,
which stands, arms outstretched, on a hilltop embracing the city. On the same street
as the jostling queue to catch the train up to see it there is a gem of a museum. Inside
is the largest collection of naif art in the world.

Painted a pretty pastel blue, it looks like a tumbledown former colonial home.
When I visited, it had been closed for several years, after its founder, Lucien
Finkelstein, passed away and the museum lost its funding (it has since reopened).

When I arrived, a few dogs came to greet me, and I wondered whether I was at the
right place until a curator at the museum, Tania, arrived, made delicious coffee in
tiny china cups and kindly showed me around.

The walls were mostly bare, and the paintings – over 6,000 works by painters
from all over Brazil, and from more than a hundred other countries, from the fifteenth
century to today – were stored around the building, stacked up against walls. The
former storage room was a big mess of wires and rubble, as it was in the process of
being rebuilt. Added to that, they had a marmot invasion to deal with. There were

several paintings still hanging, though, including the two largest naïf art paintings in
the world. The bigger of the two, Brazil, 5 centuries, by Aparecida Azedo, is a 24-
metre long fresco running along the top two walls that shows the history of Brazil; the
other, Rio de Janeiro, I like you, I like your happy people, by Lia Mittarakis, who
lived in Guanabara Bay is a 4 by 7-metre celebration of the city of Rio that hangs on
the main wall. Lucien Finkelstein commissioned both.

Quotations adorn the walls, including one by the French poet Gérard de Nerval:
‘The verb to love suits only the souls who are thoroughly Naïve.’

This chimes with Finkelstein’s definition of naïf art, which is also hanging in the

museum. In it, he explains that ‘naïf’ is a term that was first used to define the
paintings of Henri Rousseau but it is a style of painting that has always existed and
always will. Its origins are in the art of cavemen. The artists are usually self-taught
anarchists, who follow no rules and are not influenced by anyone, finding their own
motifs and techniques within themselves. He believed the naáf artist paints by
dipping the brush in his heart.

Brazil, France, Haiti, Italy and the former Yugoslavia are where you will find the
most involvement with naïf art. In each naïf art gallery around the world you will

more than likely find a few creations by Brazilian artists. Brazilians, being a very
expressive people, seem to love the naïf style: you find it everywhere in the country.
I share their love of its colour and vibrancy and love the style. It’s interesting that,
despite its simplicity, naïf art often tackles complicated issues.

That is certainly true of the series of six paintings I came to see. They are the
creation of Ozias (Ricardo de Ozias), a naïf artist still living in the city of Rio. They
tell the story of slave traffic between Africa and Brazil in the fifteenth century