These “Excitáveis” were an important creative contribution by the artist from Ceará, Sérvulo Esmeraldo (b. 1929). He was one of the local artists best known in the world beyond Ceará in the twentieth century, alongside of Antônio Bandeira, Aldemir Martins, and Xico da Silva. His work had the greatest repercussions in the 1950s and 1960s, through tests with electrostatic electricity, with which he contributed to both Kinetic art and Constructive art. He was also a printmaker and illustrator for the daily newspaper Correio Paulistano, and in 1956, he founded the Museu de Gravura in his native city of Crato. With a scholarship from the French government in 1957, he studied lithography at the École Nationale Superieure de Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he stayed for twenty years before returning to Brazil.
This document is a text written by the artist, himself, which illustrates his natural interest and subsequent research that led to the series of works he called “Excitáveis.” These works actually refer to the electrostatic properties of both the human body and things around it. The resulting objects function as boxes/cases that contain materials subject to that static electricity; with tactile contact (whether spontaneous or planned), these materials begin to move as a result of the various electric charges accumulated in them.
As supplementary readings, there are three texts on Esmeraldo’s “Excitáveis.” The first, written by Olívio Tavares de Araújo, is “Sobre a chegada de Sérvulo ao livro objeto (onde também se fala do binômio de Newton)” [doc. no. 1110763], and the second, written by Esmeraldo, is “Sobre os Excitáveis” [doc. no. 1110764]. In addition, there is a catalogue of an exhibition that was held in the French capital under the same title as the essay by the artist, L’idée et la matière (Paris: Galerie Denise René, 1974) [doc. no. 1110761].