“My angry Prophets, spokesmen for all the people of the world, have led the way to a series of paintings entitled Cries of the end of the century. The cry of the South American people subjected to military regimes, the cry of black people, the cry of the Indians, the Jews, the Palestinians, the Kurd, the Romanians, the Tibetans, the Chinese, the Afghans …. all cries of pain and suffering of all men and women. Oppressed suffering of the subjugated, socioeconomic suffering of the disinherited, pathological pain of the under-nourished, those who have cancer and AIDS.
In our immortal drama, we mortals are all brothers and sisters in pain.
It’s one and the same cry … yesterday’s … today’s.
Admittedly my painting is violent, for it is tragic, depicting the drama of human beings. But on the other hand, it is never pessimistic because what is positive in these canvasses is the strength, the generosity, the criticism of people’s indifference towards all aspects of misery.
I want an art that cries out and shakes people up.
A painting should speak by itself, they often tell painters.
My painting cries out by itself in silence.
Cries that make all Berlin walls fall, against all apartheids and all Amazons in flames…
A transcendence of all pain, mine, ours.
Sergio Bello : Paris, 1991.