Mauricio Piza

I am a painter with a penchant for the urban, for the cityscape. And I like the city I live in: Sao Paulo, the biggest city in South America, almost 20 million strong if you consider the greater Sao Paulo area. But I am not a realist or a naturalist painter. I love the city as filtered through memory and imagination, through the use of childlike signs and symbols, existing in those ambiguous spaces of dreams and cubism. The places depicted are generally identified after the fact and in a very subjective manner. I do not really expect people to see there the same things that I do. The titles of the paintings just add to their poetry. I am guided by Ut Poesis Pictura; not "as in painting so is poetry" but "as in poetry so is painting". I think that what cannot be expressed through concepts, through strict verbal discourse is much more important than what can. Art is what escapes through the cracks.

Colégio Santa Cruz '75

Escola de Arte Brasil '74

FAAP - Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado '97