Jurandi Assis, a critical essay
by Jacob Klintowitz

Life is for painter Jurandi Assis an exercise in absolute dedication. He is completely aware of his own path and intuition is his only guide. It has directed him since boyhood, making a painter out of him and leading him from the small town in the Bahia countryside to São Paulo - the largest city in South America -not as a plain unskilled laborer, but as a self-educated professional in the communication area. As an artist, he doesn't question his way of life and his vocation, but accepts his task and the gradual preparation needed to do his work.

Fate, like a set vector, determines the mysteries, the goals and the possible options. It's the artist's duty to be self-disciplined, to organize and improve his means and work with total dedication. Jurandi Assis is not concerned about the seasons of the year or about Nature's blessings or hardships: he prepares the ground, sows and harvests.

Jurandi Assis recognizes the element of fate apparent in his life choices and does his share. There is no need to resort to the wisdom and guidance of the Delphic oracle, since there is no conflict, and doubts are dispelled throughout existence. His course is set by a correct posture, dedication to work, and respect for social and family duties. Thus, the context and the apparently loose strands woven together create the fabric of reality. With this dialogue between personal action and a superior intuitive plane, the man and artist operate and realize what the future holds in store. Jurandi Assis's painting is a curious blend of polarities. From one aspect it is Dionysian. The artist surrenders completely to perception and allows memories, joys, scents and images that he knew and still loves to emerge. He is dedicated to the pleasure of work, with the passion of those who find in expression their happiest time.

From another aspect, he organizes space and composition geometrically, approximates colors with harmony, handles the chromatic transitions and plans the visual elements of the work in detail. One needs but to contemplate it to recognize the touch and the inspiration of the artist. Apollonian art at its best.

The synthesis that Jurandi Assis achieves in his work is rare. Even more so, because of the absence of conflict, indecision and struggle between opposites. Undoubtedly, what prevails here is his idea of Fate as a divine entity, as a manifestation of the sacred nature of the cosmos. The religious acceptance of reality is the origin of this harmony in painting. Religion is here understood to have the meaning of religare, to reunite different parts, to make what is above equal to what is below, to make the worldly space as sacred as the heavenly. The worldly cosmology repeats tridimensionally the sacred cosmology of a subtler dimension.

I believe that the basic component of Jurandi Assis's painting is his ability to make harmonious situations real. From this standpoint perhaps, because of the animistic idea that pervades his painting, we may be able to understand the empathy and acceptance that his work encounters in very different social segments. His painting in its dimension corresponds to the contemporary need of harmony with fate.