The red umbrella: chromatic experience in the work of Oswaldo Goeldi between 1937 and 1957

Abstract

The formal simplification in Oswaldo Goeldi’s work is characterized by a contrast between the white light at the background and the opaque black of the printed form. Poverty is the existential condition of the exiled expressionist, experienced on several levels: the ruin of traditional experience, the identification with the excluded, and, finally, the poor form sought through an aesthetic of reduction, a unifying element of a singular poetic. Not expecting much from reality, his work, performed with a rustic technique – woodcut – proposes a continuous exercise of synthesis, both in relation to the thematic elements that make up the visual discourse and to the formulation of a plastic language of its own. When he turns to the chromatic experience, Goeldi does not abandon this aesthetic of reduction. The masses of color undergo the pressure of the background light, which they seem to block, and acquire a silhouette aspect. In this context, the use of polychromy proposes a kind of graphic color, which converges on the linear element. At the same time, it reveals an autonomous presence that points to a kind of immanent symbolism of color.