Athos Bulcão's early works

If the 1940s was a decade of artistic training for the painter, the 1950s was a decade of experimenting with different art forms and mediums, including photomontages, magazine covers, theatrical scenery and costumes, and the start of his tile work.

Encouraged by Oscar Niemeyer, Athos Bulcão held his first individual exhibition at the Brazilian Architects Institute in 1944, showing around 30 pieces, including drawings and watercolors. 

These are still life and paintings of theatrical stages and backstage scenes in dim lighting, an indication of Athos' heavy involvement in theater at that time.

“It so happened that I was studying medicine but I had to work, I had to have a job, as well. At that job, which was with the Ministry for Labor, I had two colleagues who were involved with the theater. That's how I got to see [theatrical] artists up close for the first time."

"It was through these two leading comedy actors, through this environment, that I got to see everything close up.”


Athos Bulcão

Having left his medicine studies to take up painting full time, Athos moved in with other artists, becoming friends with Carlos Scliar, Enrico Bianco, and Roberto Burle Marx. He was a regular at Vermelhinho, the famous bar on Araújo Porto Alegre Street in downtown Rio de Janeiro, where he rubbed shoulders with other artists and the city's intellectual circles.

Carnivals were a recurring theme in Athos Bulcão's drawings and paintings throughout his career as an artist. Images influenced by the artist's childhood memories of the Rio de Janeiro Carnival festivities.

Like many other artists, Athos also had to find other ways to earn a living. In 1946, he started illustrating articles, poems, and stories for the A Manhã newspaper's Literature and Arts supplement. He would work at the newspaper until 1951.

What I wanted was to do something that wasn't photography, or theater, or cinema."

I started cutting out figures and putting them next to one another. It's an exercise in framing. It's something that, in my head, is perhaps linked to cinema, to movement. I'd make up little films about them.”

Athos Bulcão

Unlike some of his peers who moved towards sociopolitical themes in the 1940s and 1950s (such as Carlos Scliar and Cândido Portinari, for example), Athos followed other influences, …

… allowing himself to freely experiment with different composition possibilities in his work.

While the stage had featured merely as a motif in his drawings in the 1940s, from 1952 onwards, Athos started producing theatrical scenery and costumes on a more regular basis …

Such as for Lúcio Cardoso theatrical adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's story The Tell-Tale Heart.

He produced the scenery and the costumes for the plays Everybody and Nobody in 1953 and Uncle Vanya in 1955, both for the O Tablado theater group.

In 1955, Athos Bulcão began working with the magazine Módulo, which had Oscar Niemeyer as one of its directors. The magazine dealt with architecture and visual arts.

Athos' work featured on the covers for the magazine's first eight volumes, with the artist basing his work on the content of the articles.

Broadening out even further into graphic arts, Athos also started designing album covers for Irineu Garcia's Selo Festa label in 1955, […]

… including Pedro Bloch's The Hands of Euridice, read by the actor Rodolpho Mayer, and audio recordings by the poets Vinicius de Moraes and Paulo Mendes Campos.

Authors whose book covers were designed by Athos Bulcão include Fernando Sabino (The Appointment and The Empty City) and Gustavo Corção (The Discovery of the Other).

Their partnership was revived in 1955, when Athos made his first tile panel for what is now the Hospital da Lagoa in Rio de Janeiro.