"Clóvis Graciano got interested in painting since his childhood, but as he became an orphan at the age of 12, he began to work in very humble jobs at an early age. This experience pervaded his later production with themes related to the worker’s figure and work.
Graciano took part in important groups of artists such as Santa Helena Group, where they were concerned with reshaping academic painting. He also studied abroad, where he discovered muralism. This large-scale art, designed to occupy murals and walls in architecture and outdoors, tries to approach social and historical issues to a broad public audience, in the same way it tries to be more visible.
Besides Muralism, the influences of his friend Cândido Portinari, the mix between the Cubist aesthetics of Picasso and Cézanne, and the realism of their academic experiences formed Graciano’s style, as we can see in his works Sowing and Harvest [Semeadura and Colheita].
They represent Brazilian wealth, both by focusing on cotton – one of the great national agricultural crops, which supports the textile industry – and by appreciation of the work in two essential moments of rural life.
Now pay attention to these characters: to their faces, hands and feet. They’re quite different from the rest of the painting. Can you see the difference between the landscape's very geometric and flat-colored planes and the realism of the bodies? What’s the effect of the figures’ highlight on you? What would be the intention for emphasizing these bodies?"