Kozienice, Polonia, 1921 ¿[...] While contemporary art remits to the mechanic world of a civilization of material progress, and that its investigations are tied to the machine, I head¿with firm steps¿toward nature¿s direction, whose innumerous mysteries don¿t cease to attract me each time with more strength.¿ Franz Krajcberg, 1972 ¿[...] human imagination is infinitely poorer than nature¿s prodigious creativity.¿ Franz Krajcberg, 1972 Born Polish, Franz Krajcberg, profoundly scarred by the experience of war, studies from 1945 to 1947 at the Academy of Fine Arts of Stuttgart, where he takes classes with Willy Baumeister. Immigrant, he arrives in 1948 to Brazil and establishes in Sao Pablo, where he works cleaning and as a bricklayer. Assistant to the set up of the I Biennale of Sao Paulo (1951), he takes part in the same show as an artist. After a first individual exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Pablo he moves to the interior of Parana where he lives between 1952 and 1956, far from the artistic circles and in profound contact with nature. He does a series of paintings of expressionist tenor for which he would be awarded in 1956, at the IV Biennale of Sao Pablo and at the National Salon of Fine Arts. He moves to Rio de Janeiro and begins, in 1959, a period of long visits to Europe, returning only sporadically to Brazil. Deepening his interest for plastic studies, Krajcberg breaks with the bi-dimensionality of the canvas once he gives it textures that approximate the concept of sculptures; finally abandoning his own idea of ¿representing¿ nature, he does direct impressions of natural shapes and works in which he uses stones and dirt of different colors. In 1964, his work is recognized and awarded at the Venice Biennale, and after meeting Itabirito, in Minas Gerais, he radicalizes his approach to nature. Once he discovers roots and stones, he works on astounding sculptures and engravings on relieve. Establishing in 1973 in Bahia¿s coastline, in a wooden house that is erected within several meters from the ground, held by a tree¿s solid trunks, he journeys to Mata Gross and Amazonia; he presents, in 1976, his Livroarte, with 80 copies each containing an original sculpture and two engravings on relieve, each numbered and signed by the artist. In 1978, he writes with Pierre Restany and Sepp Baendereck the Manifesto do Rio Negro ¿ Naturalismo Integral (Black River Manifest ¿ Integral Naturalism), in which he defends a new concept of naturalism: ¿pure, original nature must be exalted as perception¿s hygiene, and mental oxygen: an integral naturalism, gigantic, one which catalyzes and accelerates our faculties of thought, emotion, and action.¿ Even though he was born in Poland, Franz Krajcberg gradually turned into one of the most appreciated Brazilian artists, exhibiting frequently in numerous countries. ¿Poets of the vestiges,¿ in words by Pierre Courthion, influenced initially by cubism and expressionism, he would immediately find a particular road, becoming pioneer of abstract expressionism in the country. His curiosities, however, took him to the tri-dimensionality of works in sculptural dimensions that reveal the richness of the natural forms. Breaking with the representational and naturalist traditions of landscape painting, and overcoming even his modern and subjective interpretations, Krajcberg reveals himself as a creator whose duty¿which sometimes approximates itself to ecologic denunciation¿is to place evidence of what already exists and has been elaborated by nature itself. The work of Franz Krajcberg, which has been impregnated by the natural universe of roots, stones, and earth, also reveals a profound existential dimension.