Santa Fe New Mexico

Claudio Souza Pinto

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"I transform situations of everyday life with a surreal filter and create fantastic and humorous images", says the Romantic Surrealist painter Claudio Souza Pinto.

Born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1954. Claudio at the age of four began working in clay under the guidance of his uncle, the painter Bernardo Cid de Souza Pinto; he sold his own art while studying for a degree in industrial design at Mackenzie University in Sao Paulo.

In 1990  a french art collector fell in love with Souza Pinto’s work and invited him to exhibit at Le Bains and the Opera in Paris. Souza Pinto lived in France for many years where he acquired solid formal training in oil painting and started his career in earnest. This contributed to a very strong European and particularly French influence in his work.

For the artist, life is a great play. "All of us have different behaviour masks" he says, "and they emerge depending on the occasion...in the theatre of life!"

Painter, poet, humourist, the definition given to Claudio Souza Pinto’s style by the artistic and intellectual communities of Paris, accurately translates the Brazilian’s fine art paintings, which transform daily situations into surreal romantic and funny images.

 

"Claudio’s paintings have a fantastic realism and a visual discussion about melancholy and love. Sadness or happiness is always present, even if in spirit". - Jacques Bral, movie director.

 

His works are the result of very elaborate preparation. The detail and technical quality along with the execution and perspective are his hallmarks. The paintings are layered with glazings and meticulous details that reveal Claudio's perfectionism.

Claudio plays with our imagination and our feelings in pleasing, delicate and elegant ways. His paintings are joyful with exuberant colours that are exquisitely balanced to create beautiful compositions. He is able to build a bridge between a fantasy world and reality, inviting us to disconnect from the world that surrounds us to unleash our own imagination.

Claudio’s paintings create an atmosphere of joy and happiness in a very relaxing way. They have a calming effect and one never tires of looking at them . His work is not only his joy but ours as well. He is as much a humourist and poet as he is an artist and this combination serves him well.

The defining characteristics in the style of Claudio Souza Pinto are thus an unusual amalgam but undoubtedly translate well in the universal language of art.

 

At first his paintings are seen as a fantasy world, but the artist explains they are deeper than that. "I paint the clothes of the person because society only values the appearance, but they only camouflage feelings". For Claudio the marks are more than fruits of creativity, "We all have different shades of behaviour, which arise according to the occasion," he says.

His style is artistic, surreal, romantic, and humorous. The boldness of colours gives us fantastic realism, and the emotion captures viewers from far away and leaves them entranced. Many respected architects and art collectors have delighted in Claudio’s works.

The large scale of his paintings, along with the magic posed through both context and artistic quality is truly admirable. Surreal, romantic, and funny images are at the core of his work, revealing his interest in love and human happiness. Painting is a silent poetry and some dreams will happen only if spoken in a work of art. As Keats so aptly put it, "Truth is beauty".

 

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