1/8: Senate remakes paintings and Renan Calheiros gets hair – 05/24/2023 – Power

Senator Renan Calheiros (MDB-AL) gained a little more hair in the second version of one of the paintings made by the Senate for the gallery of former presidents of the House. The two portraits of the senator as President of the House were torn apart in the coup attacks on January 8 and needed to be completely redone.

Plastic artist Urbano Villela, responsible for the works, told the Sheet that it was Calheiros’ advisor who asked the emedebist to have more hair in one of the new paintings.

“In fact [ele está com mais cabelo]. This is common, nothing special. In a way, it’s even expected. My expectation as a painter hardly coincides completely with the expectation of the subject”, he said.

“So it’s normal for these changes to be made. It’s normal for the senator’s advisory [solicitar]. [A assessoria] who is in charge of making these requests when there is a need to change an important detail”, he added.

The hair implant done by Renan Calheiros in 2013 took the FAB (Brazilian Air Force) to the center of a controversy. The senator used one of the planes to travel to Recife (PE), where he underwent surgery to implant 10,000 strands of hair. After the negative repercussions, he returned the money to public coffers.

With two passages for the presidency of the Senate – the first between 2005 and 2007 and the second between 2013 and 2017, when he amended two terms -, the Alagoan has two portraits in the gallery of former presidents of the Senate. The first of them, therefore, portrayed the senator before the hair transplant.

Renan Calheiros’ advice was sought by the Sheet for comment on the paint change, but declined to comment.

This Wednesday (24), the Senate replaced the five paintings damaged on January 8 —two by Calheiros, two by former president José Sarney and one by Ramez Tebet, father of Planning Minister Simone Tebet (MDB)— and included two new ones, from the current president, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), and from the former president Davi Alcolumbre (União Brasil-AL).

During the unveiling of the works, Alcolumbre said, in a joking tone, that his portrait was more beautiful than that of former Senator Eunício Oliveira (MDB-CE), who accompanied the ceremony at the Senate Museum in the front row. Eunício is now a federal deputy.

In addition to the paintings by Calheiros, Urbano Villela also painted one of Sarney’s portraits and one of Ramez Tebet from scratch. The other painting by Sarney that was in the Senate gallery was voluntarily restored by the restoration manager of the STF (Federal Supreme Court), Marcos Antonio de Faria.

Urbano Villela said he was relieved when he learned that only five paintings had been vandalized during the invasion of Congress.

“I reassured myself because [para] to redo a work of this nature —there are almost 80 canvases—, it would take me many years. Perhaps I would no longer be able to redo this work”, said the artist to the report.