Um carretel (A Spool)

"A whole realm of visual knowledge comes into play in works like the 1960 etching A Spool. Iberê leads us through the whole printed field, going from one texture to another, from the stretched silhouette of the spool to its round holes, from its empty inside to the density of the aquatint pattern, from the materiality of the object to the corrosion of the acid, from its immobility to the dramatic tension of the image, from the outlines of the shape to the external edges of the print. Thus he sets about removing the points of support for our more realist perception. The spool is transformed into plastic form. It may not be necessary to recall the origin of his choice of the spool, one of his humble childhood toys, or its role in initiating the artist’s dialogue with abstraction. The amazing thing about the image is how Iberê manages to retain so much movement in a presentation of one single spool. [...] [Iberê] transformed the motionless, isolated spool into the depiction of energy and monumentality."
Vera Beatriz Siqueira, Cálculo da expressão: Oswaldo Goeldi, Lasar Segall e Iberê Camargo (Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê Camargo, 2010) 125.
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