
Despite being very young and only at the beginning of his career as an artist, Pedro Moraleida Bernardes left, when he died prematurely, in 1999, at the age of 22, while still a student at the School of Fine Arts at UFMG, a large and diverse collection of works of art, consisting of about 450 paintings, (using mixed techniques, oil, acrylic, gouache, graphite, colored pencils, collages, among others, on various supports such as paper, wood, fabric, canvas, metal, etc.) ; 1450 drawings (including comics and cartoons and even about X-rays); more than four and a half hundred texts (including poems, manifestos, short stories, parables, existential reflections on art and nature, etc.) and about 120 sound experiments.
Collection that impresses both for the volume and diversity of forms of expression, techniques and supports used, as well as for the richness of its characteristics, for the quality of content and forms, for its timeliness, originality, consistency and coherence. It is a unique and genuine collection, the result of daring, innovative work, engaged in the human and social themes of our time, controversial, coherent and against the dominant trends in the plastic arts of Minas Gerais and Brazil at the time, through which the “painting had died” and "art", to preserve itself as such, it should be "indifferent" ou “neutral” in relation to human and social dilemmas and conflicts, with content and form, in a sense, premonitory and precursors of trends that would only gain strength over time.
The artist himself expressed, in several personal texts, his particular vision about art and the work of artists, as in the presentation he made of the works presented in the exhibition “BH From here to a century", in 1997, commemorating the centenary of Belo Horizonte, where it says: “… in these works, I try to use images and characters from the Bible, from Greek mythology, to convey an aggressive and morbid impression, also using symbols such as dismembered people, people urinating or defecating and grotesque animals (lizards, insects, etc.). I try to convey this kind of impression to talk about the characteristics of our time, especially people in my age group. I try to talk especially about certain characteristics that deeply displease and irritate me in my generation, such as a disguised conservatism and a hedonism that is nothing more than a refuge from one's own problems. This is all I want to say, the rest is up to anyone who sees it.”