Véio

Cícero Alves dos Santos (“Véio”) takes up a unique position within the Brazilian art environment.
His works reveal dimensions that are significantly different from what we call ‘popular art’. His sculptures combine aspects of the popular tradition (sculptures in wood, use of the figures suggested by tree trunks and branches, and the use of rudimentary tools) with intense colours- much closer to industrial than to the delicate shades of nature. This stridence, of a somewhat pop nature, is intensified by a formidable imagination, which makes us see hybrid figures in his wood works, figures that blend the characteristics of the animals we know with those of the androids and transformers present in films and cartoons.
On the other hand, just with one penknife, Cícero sculpts forms that are minute in size, but bare an enigmatic appearance, bringing back a force once reduced by scale. Men and women climb and go down mountains for no apparent reason; animals straddle each other, and women carry animal body parts on their heads. In these small sculptures, there is a more realistic aspect present in the carving of the shapes of people and animals. However, as yet we do not know the real meaning of his behaviour.
Cícero Alves dos Santos lives in the vicinity of Nossa Senhora da Glória, an important city in the backlands of the state of Sergipe, with some 50 thousand inhabitants. The city public market is very important to the state and attracts people from far afield to trade chickens, asses, pigs and also electronic equipment of all kinds, as well as lots of imported bric-à-brac from China, or maybe from Paraguay.
Coexistence with so ambiguous and so dynamic an environment has further triggered the talent of this rare sertanejo (resident of the backlands of the Brazilian Northeast), who has made the preservation of the memories of his people into the very reason of his existence. Memory is not nostalgia. For this reason, to affirm the entirety of an art originating from a rural world that is steadily disappearing, Cícero had to become the creator of an artistic category that did not exist.

Sources:
Photo: http://artepopularbrasil.blogspot.com.br/2012/11/veio.html
Text: http://www.galeriaestacao.com.br/en/artist/7#prettyPhoto[iframes]/0/