Zélia Suassuna (1931)

An important artist in the Movimento Armorial, her works include paintings, lithographs, sculptures and tapestries. The influence exerted on her production by her husband, writer Ariano Suassuna, cannot however be denied and the opposite is also true. Zelia’s influence on Ariano was massive, especially regarding the inclusion of the beauties of the Zona da Mata of Pernambuco in his work.

The artist inherited the simplicity of her lines and the taste for symmetrical balance and for individual figures from popular xylography, as well as the thematic viewpoint found in all her fables – the saints, the angels, the fauna and flora, the winged and mythical creatures, all linked to the fabulous and the fantastic. Already in the decade of 1970, her drawings illustrated some of Ariano’s books that were published by José Olympio, among these, Farsa da Boa Preguiça and the volume that contains the plays O Santo e a Porca and O Casamento Suspeitoso. In her tapestries and ceramics, she uses strong, pure colors that deliberately imprint a rustic and primitive beauty on her works.