jesuys crystiano :
a contrario
If the only thing that is not drained with time is the mystery, the work and the life of Jesuys Crystiano seem to be able to resist us for eternity.
Nevertheless, so far away, and yet so close, these drawings carry the snippets of an existence whose race ended in Atibaia, São Paulo in 2015. Without any certainty as to his civil status, not even if the name was his. An administrative court decreed that he was born in 1950, while he himself hardly mentioned his past, nor his family. This simple heart nevertheless produced some of the most enigmatic works of Brazilian art brut, like those of an Albino Braz or a Bispo do Rosario.
Jesuys Crystiano seems to have spent his adult life wandering the streets of Ilheus (Bahia) until 2010, when a German hotelier - who had noticed his wall drawings - took him in and provided him with material to put his surrealist worlds on paper, thus saving him from being hospitalized in a psychiatric institution. During his last 5 years of life, Jesuys was able to produce hundreds of drawings, populated with vultures, soccer players, overturned chairs and tables, characters with interlocking faces, drawn with colored pencil and charcoal, often enhanced with collages and annotations.
Texts : Thilo Scheuermann, Manuel Anceau
Forewords : Christian Berst
Catalog published to mark the exhibition jesuys crystiano : a contrario, from June 8 to July 17, 2022.