MARCUS ZAYIT — IMAGES AND SYMBOLS

 

With a career that began in the late 1990s, he reveals his path and style, where his quality as a poet of the image can be assessed. Indeed, images and symbols are the indicators of how to see/read his work, in the way he expresses the social, cultural, and religious values of his land, and how to feel the beauty of his painting.

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Marcus Zayit is self-taught, but he honed his technique by working with his references in a very personal way, using the brush freely, elaborating forms and painting colors in an aesthetic free from constraints. In his work, the well-defined line and contour prevail, illuminating figures from the popular imagination of Northeastern Brazilian traditions. His universe is characterized by a poetics in which characters and forms emerge through intense and soft colors.

 

To the constructive element evident in the design of the images, Marcus adds sensory elements, intense chromatism and graphic rhythm, mastery of spatiality and timeless expressive drama. The disproportions of the figures (faces, hands, arms and feet), the use of symbols (birds, fish, circles, triangles), the vibrant colors, the volumetric dimensioning and a spontaneous creativity are his strengths, in the name of a very particular expressiveness.

 

His preference is for religious figures, Christian saints and Candomblé deities, popular characters or warriors who seem to have emerged from medieval times due to their very construction and where links to Art Deco are noticeable—the parallel and elongated lines of the hands and feet, the contours/adornments of the images. But his search also leads him to fantastic beings, a mixture of men and machines. Without concern for adhering to this or that formula, this or that aesthetic scheme, Marcus seeks to translate his art through a pantheon rich in elements of a very personal and, at the same time, universal poetics, rich in symbolism.

 

(*) Elvira Vernaschi, curator, historian and art critic. Member of ABCA and AICA — Brazilian and International Associations of Art Critics.