11. FEATURED ARTIST: Paulo Sayeg
The Magnificent Art of Paulo Sayeg of São Paulo, Brazil
Artist Paulo Sayeg
Winner of the 1987 APCA award for best designer.
About a year ago, Paulo and I followed each other on Twitter. In the months since, I have had the pleasure and privilege to become familiar with Paulo’s extraordinary, largely figurative art, a tremendous body of gorgeous and immersive work, swirling with creative energies, spiked with wizardry, powerfully enriched with cultural themes, and spanning genres from magical realism to science fiction. Paulo’s style is vibrantly unique. Captivating. Haunting. And utterly unforgettable.
Paulo was born in 1960, in São Paulo, Brazil and has been involved with art since a child, learning painting and lithography from his uncle, Alberto Garutti. At 22-years-old, Paulo presented a solo exhibition, the first of many, both domestically and internationally. Paulo continues to live in São Paulo, where he works in illustration, animation, visual programming and advertising.
In 1987, the São Paulo Association of Art Critics (APCA) recognized Paulo with the award for best designer. APCA was established in 1956 and celebrates the best in the Brazilian fields of stage acting, music, literature, film, television, plastic arts, and radio.
The art pieces that I have selected for presentation in this issue have been for the most part, but not entirely, an attempt to follow this literary journal’s sought style and theme, that of minimalist black & white line drawing and paintwork in the field of science fiction — extending to fantasy, especially when it includes elements of science fiction. I couldn’t help but wander off into the creative thickets, returning with gorgeous art pieces that wonderfully complement the poetry published here within and are soundly in keeping with the aesthetic ideals of this journal, but that are probably neither science fiction nor fantasy — though much is open for interpretation in this regard — nor entirely black & white. The exquisite art that Paulo creates is exactly the type of art that I had always envisioned for this magazine. I am both excited and honored to be able to present a selection of it here.
Discovering Paulo’s art has been a splendid development for this magazine and its readers, and I deeply appreciate his spirit of generosity in granting me free rein to pick and choose the art that I wanted to publish in this issue. That’s where things became really difficult for me as an editor, because I wanted to publish everything I saw, but again, I needed to stick with the overarching stylistic and thematic concept, or at least try to.
Paulo’s work encompasses breathtaking pieces created with luxurious colors that enchant the eye and cast a spell over the mind. As mentioned, I’m primarily showcasing the black & white line art here, so this is literally just the tip of the iceberg! Paulo has been creating art for many decades now and I look forward to presenting much more of his work in the future.
Visit the Wikipedia page about Paulo, for more details. Paulo regularly posts images of his art via his Twitter account, @sayeg1960, and you will find his work on numerous art websites.
I highly encourage you to explore more of Paulo’s magnificent art!
The Editor
