CRITICAL REMARKS Silva Palmeira, born in Santarém in 1934, is a painter (awarded with the Silver Medal Mérite et Dévouement Français, Paris, 1997), ceramist, and sculptor. He has been exhibiting since 1957 and is represented in various national and international collections. In a catalog text, the painter himself spoke about his journey: "Traveling through spaces (...) with deep landscapes, where the woman is the main theme, and blue is the touch for an eminently planetary language, where poetry and philosophy are tonal musicalities (...)." Therefore, the woman, her plastic and symbolic universe, occupies a central place in his painting, with well-defined forms that are emphasized by drawing as well as smooth and subtly contrasting colors that also present his landscapes, in a proximity to poetics that the writer Urbano Tavares Rodrigues was sensitive to.

In the present serigraphy on canvas, created like other works in the same line, under the influence of Japanese erotic printmaking, the stylization of femininity evokes two cultures, the Western and the Eastern, enveloping us in an atmosphere of sensuality and eroticism, as well as a mysterious aura of beauty. Female seduction is represented in well-defined forms that are emphasized by the drawing and interpenetrate in a wise visual game that accentuates the dynamism of the composition. Filled with smooth and subtly contrasting colors, punctuated with small decorative flowers and featuring the emblematic blue, the flow of gaze and dreams that traverse time and briefly shine within it, these figures, so characteristic of the painter's plastic and poetic universe, confront us with the tranquil challenge of their gaze. They assume languid postures and stand out against the background of a suggested trompe-l'oeil frame that blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction, between life and art.

Maria João Fernandes - International Association of Art Critics (AICA)