Santidio's prints are the starting point of this exhibition. Generally the artist makes use of overlays of colors, having been known for his woodcuts, in large format, of birds of Piauí, where he was born and where his imaginary universe comes from. In this exhibition, Santidio presents a more recent work, with a different investigation of color and an agile trait, where the flora of his native region comes to light in a simplified and free graphic. Unlike the birds that carried a more charged atmosphere, these images transport us to an environment of innocence and puerile. It is not plants as they are, but as they inhabit the artist's memory. A great admirer of Matisse, he tells us that he engraves for pleasure and that his engravings have the intention of brightening the space where they are. He does what he would like to see in his house. Because he is so young, we can not predict the paths he will follow, but it is worth remembering Matisse's trajectory that at the end of his life brought color and traces to the limits of that unimagined era of freedom and synthesis and in 1908 declared his aesthetic manifesto: “What I dream of is an art of balance,of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter.”

Célia Barros