The print entitled O sol, a força, a terra e o céu, 1973 by Luisa Correia Pereira (Lisbon, 1945 - 2009) is one of the highlights when promoting the exhibition O pequeno mundo [The small world] curated by Sérgio Mah. The show, held at MACNA – Nadir Afonso Contemporary Art Museum, Chaves, from 1 November 2020 to 21 February 2021, will travel to Lisbon, and open at Culturgest on October 2021.

Luisa Correia Pereira created a remarkable and unique body of work consisting of paintings, drawings and prints. In 2003, Fundação EDP and Centro de Arte Moderna – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian collaborated to organize her solo exhibition Fiat Lux: Paris-Lisbon. In 2011, the exhibition The summoning  of all beings presented at Culturgest included graphic works, such as, etchings, linoleum, woodcuts and monotypes, created in the early 70s – 1971 to 1974 –, the initial years of her artistic residency in Paris as a Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian scholarship student.

Throughout her artistic career, the artist revealed an uncommon imagination as to the invention of characters, narratives, situations, landscapes, among other graphic and pictorial elements. By means of an apparently childish and dreamlike visual language, the artist creates fundamental forms, a sort of fantastic alphabet that discloses delusional meanings. It is within this framework that O sol, a força, a terra e o céu, [Sun, force, earth, sky] 1973 makes sense. The symbols and colours match the concepts expressed in the title, a playful game that drives us to identify the undecipherable and to glimpse into that which is concealed. Trying to derive meaning from the drawings’ informal matter is perhaps the most noticeable trait in Luisa Correia Pereira's work; however, it is in observing this doubt that lies the profound humour and madness of the world in which we live. Not going against the freedom that characterizes the artist's work, Gaëtan Lampo states that this print reveals “a greater skill on the quality of printing but, above all, a balance between formal language and technique (not making the one a subject of the other) and a refined sense of composition." – in Culturgest exhibition catalogue, p. 29.

In O pequeno mundo exhibition catalogue curator Sérgio Mah declares: “We finally have a group of etchings by Luisa Correia Pereira that forms a fascinating cosmography of beings, landscapes, vegetation, meteorological phenomena. It is a bizarre world, where signs and symbols referring to the world of archaeology, astrology and magic proliferate, making it difficult to understand whether we are facing the leftovers of an ancient and extinct world, or the rare signs of an alien land yet to be discovered.”

Hugo Dinis