Roots and flowers

In the years 1960-70, a new step began with the roots and the protruding flowers. Frans Krajcberg discovered in the strength of the rhizome a vital, secular, restless and aggressive energy which suited him. However, he sees the flower as a death messenger. His flowers arise from twisted trunks, while the roots become distorted and bruised. 

 

"He made death into life, life into art", says Federico Morais in the exhibition catalog of Frans Krajcberg’s works at the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro in 1965. According to critics, the roots seemed “to want to shout, with the same intensity as they violate earth in its vanishing rhizomatic lines.”  

 

Polished wood

Settled in Nova Viçosa, Frans Krajcberg made his first “polished wood”, assemblages of dead wood from which he draws architectural lines: hollow trees or mangroves, devoured by light. 

“When I saw the mangroves, I was impressed. I come from Tachisme, from Abstraction in Paris. How to capture the life of these forms, their movements and vibrations? Soto succeeded in the “penetrable” in the forecourt of the MAM in Paris. In this white vibration, I found the Amazon rainforest”.