“You do not know what the world is talking about about the Amazon! This is the world year of forests.” This phrase 2025, the year in which the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, COP30, will be held in Belém Do Pará. But in 2011, it was said by France Karagburg, an artist who became a screaming in defense of the environment. It was a conversation with students on the eve of the opening of a 90 -year celebration exhibition. History is one of the many who narrated in the work of “Frans Krajcberg: Nature as Culture”, a biography issued by João Meirells, the world of the environment and the artist’s friend, in a Cesc Sao Paulo and Idos statement.
“I was 24 years old and I was 65 years old. We were together, we visited Mato Grosso for two years in the Amazon part CNN Brazil.
Krajcberg arrived in Brazil in 1949, after he lost almost all his family members in World War II and enslaved in the field of forced work. Less than ten years later, in 1957, he will be elected the best national painter in every two years of the internationals in Sao Paulo. During this period, he also participated in every two years of 1951, 1953 and 1955, in addition to five other modern art halls. Despite his arrival here without speaking one Portuguese word, shortly after that he was associated with important names for artistic scenario at the time, such as Cândido Portinari, Alfredo Volpi and Lasar Segall.
Indeed, at this stage, he begins to photograph and use natural elements in his works. Living time in Itabirito, Minas Gerais, used to extract natural dyes from a cave from the area. In a biography statement, Krajcberg says: “After the war, which I saw the horrors of men, I cannot work with man … I do not shake human beings, only with nature.”
“Brazil, the name of the country’s country, must be called burning”
In the late eighties of the last century, after traveling across the Amazon region and witnessed the forest destroyed, Krajcberg begins using burning waste in his business. In the passage of the CV, Merlis wrote: “The angry, France raised his arms, who encouraged what he saw (…) France was in the Portuguese Portuguese:” Brazil, Brazil, Brazil, the rural name of the tree, they should be called burning! “.
“He was, and he was indeed a very close artist from environmental issues. He participated in RIO+20, and he had more than one exhibition there,” Merlis said in the interview, citing the United Nations Sustainable Development Conference, in June 2012, in Rio de Janeiro. “He managed to include himself in different international conferences of the environment, and of course, it was a kind of only voice, but it represents a different vision.”
Meirells believes that if he is alive, Krajcberg definitely wants to participate in COP30. “He will be angry at the position of some countries today. He wants to be in the discussion center.” The artist died in 2017 and left a great legacy of the works carried out from the roots of roots composed of the burning areas in the Amazon.
“Many and Amazon collected very linked to his experience and innovation. Of course, through the Atlantic Forest, Cirado, and finally, and other biological drums.
“It was a milestone in my life.”
A project in the Amazon led by Joao Merleles’s father was the tall relationship between him and Karagkberg. Joao Carlos de Souza Merleles, his father, presided over the colonization project of Guruina, in the late 1970s, with the aim of based on the families of farmers in the Rio region of the same name.
Meirells Filho tells himself in the book: “We won 3000 km from the road, and they hit the tin in the old and angry truck from France, from Nova Vaya to the tents of the Gurwena River. I am severe, in the face of the dependency of the extermination of nature.”
Today, the author identifies himself as a social activist -and he divides his time between Ribeirão Preto, in the inner part of Sao Paulo, and to him, where the PEABIRU Institute, which develops social and environmental projects. He is optimistic about COP30 in November. “It has already started for those in Pelim, meaning that discussions are much hotter, people, organizations and movements are in its position. Of course there are great difficulties, old problems still exist. But by highlighting them, it may be positive to get out of stagnation. So, I think it’s positive.
“I owe a lot (to France) as instructions, because I came from a family of entrepreneurs, who worked in the countryside, livestock, and colonialism. The opportunity arose from SOS Atlantic Forest, which was born, embraced this issue. I helped France at this time of the decision.” Meirells was vice president and director of the SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation, which was founded in 1986.
