Study for No Vacancy

Gerchman's neo-figuration knew how to work political themes with corrosive humor and to include mass media motifs in his work. This led him to approach the tropicalist movement (he was the author of the cover of the collective album "Tropicália panis et circensis", which revolutionized Brazilian popular music) and to call himself "The king of bad taste". This study presents the portrait of a crowd on a background of green and yellow ribbons, colors of the Brazilian flag, and with the inscription "Não há vagas" [There are no vacancies]. This should be read in the context in which the work was produced. In March 1964 the military dictatorship began in Brazil, and the attempts at the popular "grassroots reforms" that had begun with the democratic government at the beginning of the decade were frustrated and interrupted. Gerchman's legend, then, can be interpreted as a reference to the world of labor and the lack of work, but also, in a broader sense, to the exclusion experienced during the dictatorship.