Towards the end of the Portinari Project's survey work, at the end of 1982, Professor João Candido created an audiovisual piece that presents a spectacle that not even the painter himself was allowed to see: the overview of his work. In it, two Brazilian symphonies vibrate: one pictorial, the other musical. More than 200 of the painter's works are paraded along with a soundtrack that accompanies the great themes of Portinari's oeuvre: from Villa-Lobos to chorinho, from country music to the Minas Gerais masters of sacred music, from popular song to Marlos Nobre and Guerra Peixe.
Additionally, the audiovisual piece presents a summary of the Portinari Project, which places it as one of the results of a broad and vigorous movement to recover national memory that has been springing up in the most diverse areas in Brazil over the last few decades. Describing its objectives, the methodology created for its implementation, the results already achieved and what still remains to be done, he also dwells on the project's use of resources generated by high-tech areas, especially information technology. Completing the first part of the lecture is an illustrated biography of the painter, which shows his place in the historical and social context of his time, his participation in the great aesthetic, artistic, cultural, social and political concerns of his generation.
The second part of the lecture is essentially modular, being produced according to the context and audience for which it is intended. In its most recent versions, a great deal of emphasis is placed on the War and Peace Project, which is the main focus of our work at the moment. For just over 40 years, this multimedia lecture has traveled throughout Brazil, from small villages in the countryside to large capitals, as well as abroad: the United States, France, England, Italy, Portugal, Austria, Norway, Mexico, Argentina, Russia, etc. Having toured almost every Brazilian state, this audiovisual show has been warmly received by the audience, who recognize themselves in the work of the artist who portrayed them, as reported by the Rio Grande do Sul journalist Beta Timm:
" ... In the crowded Rectory, many people had the feeling of being at home, listening to their friend tell them about his most recent outing. With no text ready, João knocks and enters. He's family... Perhaps sensing this, the audience packed the Rectory Hall, which can be considered a record for plastic arts activities... During the performance [João] shows his father's friends, as if they were old friends of his and of the audience. And he makes them come across to the audience as the coffee pickers came across to his father: as models of Brazilians who build the country's culture.
Drummond could have been that old half-poet uncle that everyone has. Mário de Andrade or Vinícius, our close cousins. They are not entries, they have flesh and blood, they have friends in that friend who is there, next to the audience and not in front of them... the audience certainly recognized themselves and smiled in a complicit way, just as they would if they were opening an old family album... a work capable of making you think and reflect on a time and a country. A work capable of making you smile and get emotional, of mirroring and criticizing an era of which the Portinari Project is one of the most beautiful fruits..."
The late ambassador Jayme de Barros, Portinari's fraternal friend and one of the main people responsible for resolving the difficulties that arose during the final delivery and inauguration of the 'War' and 'Peace' panels at the UN headquarters in New York, having attended one of these presentations, also left his testimony in his autobiography "Chão de Vida - Memórias" (Léo Christiano Editorlal, 1984):
"...I got emotional, for myself and for Portinari. I wish he had been there, next to me, the night I watched the audiovisual presentation about his life and work, made by his son João Candido, in the lecture hall of the War College. There in front of me was no longer just the son of the extraordinary painter talking about and commenting on his father's work. I don't know how he managed to separate one from the other so clearly. That bright-eyed, agile young man was naturally, impartially and fairly discussing a painter who might even have seemed strange to him personally. With extreme simplicity, he recounted Portinari's difficult and anguished life, from his humble childhood to the universal glorification of his work. Clear images, irrefutable logical reasoning, conclusions imposed by the unfolding of the arguments. No sentimental concessions in his words. Everything he said was being demonstrated on the projection screen, reflecting images and documents, parading, articulated, synchronized with the music adapted with extreme happiness, canvases, figures, landscapes, all those fabulous people, that fantastic crowd surprised and immortalized by Portinari's genius, in reconstituting and recreating the Brazil of his time..."
Each presentation always differed from the previous ones, dynamically incorporating the innovations that were taking place in the practical implementation of the Portinari Project. It was also fascinating to incorporate the extraordinary technological development that was driving the formatting and equipment used in the Lecture (just remember that, having started in the 1980s, the Lecture is the same age as the microcomputer industry). Among other achievements in this long history, we are proud to have been the only ones invited to give the inaugural lecture at the "Berkeley Multimedia Research Center", a twenty-million dollar institution created by the University of California. We have also given the opening lecture at Symposiums, Congresses, Seminars, University Master Classes, etc., and celebrated, also as "Keynote Speakers", important anniversaries of Universities, Research Centers, Government Agencies, Companies, etc., in Brazil and abroad, according to the list of presentations reproduced below.
The Portinari Project has always sought to maintain a public face through exhibitions, publications, campaigns and lectures given from the north to the south of the country and abroad, with the aim of creating a visual and historical education of the formation of modern Brazilian culture, of which Portinari is one of the exponents.
As Director-General of the Portinari Project, Professor João Candido Portinari has given numerous lectures at the invitation of public and private institutions in Brazil and abroad: FINEP, CNPq, SBPC, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, War College, a large number of federal and state universities, municipal and state secretariats for culture, education and science and technology, research institutions and scientific congresses, IMPA, LNCC, CBPF, INPE, SERPRO, CNEN, IBM Science Center, CPFL, COPPE, Petrobras, IPRJ, Museu da Imagem e do Som, Oficina Literária Afrânio Coutinho, Museu de Arte da Bahia, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de São Paulo, Museu da República, Banco Central, Banco do Brasil, the Brazilian Societies of Computing, Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Applied and Computational Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Psychology, History, among several others.
He gave the Inaugural Lecture at the School of Communication and Arts - ECA, of the University of São Paulo; he was a Keynote Speaker at the closing lectures of COMDEX/Rio 95 and the opening lectures of COMDEX/São Paulo 95. He gave the opening speech at the event commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Ministry of Science and Technology, in the Black Hall of the National Congress.
Abroad, he gave the inaugural lecture at the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center, at the University of California, in November 1995. That same year, he was Keynote Speaker at the closing lecture of ED-MEDIA 95 - World Conference on Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, at the University of Graz, Austria.
He also spoke at UNESCO (in Paris, at the invitation of the Special Secretariat for Informatics), at the Association of Brazilian Researchers and Students in France, at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, in Paris, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (in Paris and also in Lisbon), at the International Congress on Hypermedia and Interactive Media - ICHIM, at Cambridge University, in England, among other events.
Lectures given over the last 42 years by Professor João Candido Portinari as founder and director of the Portinari Project at the invitation of the following institutions:
