Insects
Butterflies, beetles, bees and spiders are the small creatures in the work of Chico da Silva and the Pirambu School. They almost always appear beside a large bird that turns toward them, or scattered through the trees and along the edges of the canvases.
Insects and butterflies
In 1973, when he listed his subjects, Chico ended the list with butterflies, and a Borboleta do Céu already appears among the works of about 1960. In the studio, creatures with wings multiplied: Ivan de Assis brought in winged animals from the films of Greco-Roman mythology then showing in Fortaleza’s cinemas, and Chico himself took them up in the pictures he painted on his own in 1970.
In the master’s works in the collection, the insect is the counterpoint to the large bird. In Fantastic Birds and Butterfly, a bird turns toward a butterfly; in Two Birds and an Insect, a long beak comes down on a bristling insect. In Fantastic Animals (1978), the insect takes over the whole picture: a large insect attacks a smaller one on a blue ground.
Babá scattered bees, beetles and spiders through the trees and along the edges of the Instituto Oboé canvases, as in Birds Insects and Snake. Claudionor set butterflies on the branches in Bird and Insects, and Garcia put ants and a caterpillar on the leaves in Fantastic Bird and Insects.