Born in Nazaré, Mário Botas (1952-1983) has been drawing, painting and writing since childhood. However, it was when he arrived in Lisbon in 1970, to study medicine, that he encountered new horizons and artistic references. He then becomes close to several personalities linked to surrealism, but this characterisation is far from defining him. As he himself states: "To want to resurrect in the 1970s a surrealism in its third marriage is to wave the flag of conquest in the ruins of a castle.”

However, some elements help to shed light on his universe of reference, namely his interest in mythology, literature, philosophy, and opera. In the constellation of his favourite authors and artists are Cervantes, Swift, Rousseau, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Lautreamont, Lewis Carrol, Fernando Pessoa, Jorge Luis Borges, Brueghel, Blake, or Klee.

This small-format work invokes a closeness, creating an intimacy between the observer and the silent and unusual scene that unfolds there. Everything in the work contributes to that uncanny that cannot be decoded: from the construction of the space, to the characters and to their movement. From a last dark plane, a character with a human body, boxing gloves and an animal head - but without facial features - steps forward. A group of three characters, two of them with bird's heads (and boxing gloves), shift its march to the right of the composition, ignoring us. We then realise that they are walking towards what seems to be a stage, as if they were in a theatre or an opera and the place of the spectator is not ours, that of the observer, but rather internal to the fiction created by the artist. The unusual universe of Mário Botas was not only made of drama, but also of mysterious humour and irony.

LC