Scenario for the Gulbenkian Ballet Company, 1971

Paraphrasing Sánches Bugallo, “We are faced with the work of a surprising artist who, despite being unknown to the general public, is a clear exponent of surrealism. Surrealism in its most poetic and boldest state, evocative and nostalgic”. This work exposed here was the study made for the scenario of the ballet "Odyssey of Being", interpreted by the Gulbenkian Ballet Company in 1971, among other scenarios who performed for this company. “Cruzeiro Seixas’ entire creative process leads us to another process of inter-corporal communication in the realm of ambiguity, with only the ebb and flow of passion. Such is, in this regard, the plastic and poetical expression that we find in his tribute to the body as the driving force of nature. A process that leads us to that interplay of contrasted – but complementary, after all – worlds that create an enigmatic and, therefore, different reality – but one that brings us closer to discovering a harmony of oneiric sensations. Something that should not be mistaken for the fantastic, since for Seixas the fantastic is something that does not belong to him and that he does not defend. A process, in short, that is based on the artist’s imagination, which is something very different. Imagination. (…) And Imagination, in effect, is the territory of light and shade. (…) Cruzeiro Seixas – whom we consider the greatest exponent of Portuguese surrealism, unjustly ignored to a large extent outside his country – is an architect of images who (…) erects the building of his creative universe on the elements of poetry, the poetry of painting and verse, with such a degree of automatism that he releases the most intimate and genuine contents of man. And all of this in the closest rapport between corporal space and the universe. Plastic poetry, we could add, that gives us the vision of a constantly metamorphosing world, not like a Stendhal-like mirror of life but rather an adventure of knowledge. An adventure that leads us pleasurably to that universe inhabited by beings living together harmoniously in the kaleidoscope of impulses that control nature. (…) His work is the expression of an attitude towards life. And this attitude, so characteristic of militant surrealism, based on Granell’s tripod of “freedom, love and poetry”, is the key that enables us to penetrate his planet, so rich in suggestions and prodigious evocations. In short, a happier universe. That is why his pictorial or literary poetry is much more than a metaphor.” (Paco López-Barxas)