Brazil's Cavalcanti

Emiliano Augusto di Cavalcanti Albuquerque de Mello--better known as "Di" --is one of Brazil's best painters. Fourteen of his cheerful, chubby pictures (including the three on the opposite page) are a feature attraction of the most comprehensive show of contemporary art ever staged in Latin America. In the exhibition in Sao Paulo, which includes 1,700 works from 21 countries, Di has a room to himself.

Di looks and acts rather like a smaller replica of his idol, Diego Rivera. He has the same froggish frame and features, a similar instinct for gregarious, bohemian living. In his pockets, he usually carries a pen, pencils, paintbrushes, adhesive tape, wadded-up notes, neckties, socks, toothpaste and a list of telephone numbers. Thus equipped, he is ready to go anywhere and have a fine time (he once said: "I was born to go traveling around the world on an ostrich, but that could only be done in the 19th Century, when men had imagination and women's arms were round").

He also likes to sit among friends in his cluttered Copacabana apartment and dash off a picture. "My painting," he says serenely, "represents what I've been since I became a man--a mixture of resolution, lyricism, sensualism and festivity." At 54 he paints with bold, broad strokes the things he sees around him. He roughhews his compositions, using an elementary and therefore easy-to-take sort of cubism. His colors are too garish to glow, his figures almost too heavy to breathe, but they please a good many people.

Di's father, an army general, first sent him to a military academy, then to law school, but gave up trying when the youth ran off with an Italian dancer. While learning to paint, Di worked as a railroad-tie inspector, newspaperman, dress designer and actor. He spent ten years in Europe, studying and largely rejecting its modern painting styles.

European art strikes him as being too precious. "Here," he thinks, "we should create a more human art. . . A painter should paint for the million and not for a predetermined sect or level." Perhaps because he paints "for the million," Di has been accused of being a Communist. He denies it: "Political creeds stand between the artist and that which he wants to interpret. It is sufficient to be human."

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