Painting teacher, visual artist and lyricist. These were the only three qualifications of Filipe Grimaldi, 38, from São Paulo, before going viral on social media with reactions to works created by national artists. Now, another qualification has been added to your resume: influencer.
Currently with 580 thousand followers on Instagram, his main social network, Grimaldi gained visibility with “react” videos – a format in which people record their impressions when watching a video for the first time.
Famous for catchphrases like “Cry, Photoshop” and “this is very careful and manual”, the São Paulo native won over the public with the simplicity in which he explains the techniques used and with a positive narration, always praising the artists.
But, who is Filipe Grimaldi and how did he manage to achieve so much success? The lyricist himself answered these questions in an interview with CNN .
Love for art
Grimaldi’s career in art began as a child, with his love for drawing and inspired by his aunt.
“I always had an artistic desire, despite not being a great drawer, I had friends who were much better. I was kind of born with it. I went to my aunt, who was a ceramist, an artisan, and I saw that there was a side to art that wasn’t just about the gallery, which was also about crafts, crafts,” she explained.
“When I was 18, I left school. All my friends were studying for public schools, public universities, and none of those more technical courses I really liked. I liked more aesthetic things. Art college was not a well-regarded thing, it was a bum college at the time,” she added.
Focused on following the artistic path, Grimaldi decided to combine the “useful with the pleasant”.
“I ended up looking at design, which had a use of art as, let’s say, artistic aesthetics, a use of it on a functional side,” he said.
“At the time it was industrial design, and people said ‘look, there’s a lot of art at this college here, I think it’s a cool thing you can do’. Normally, in industrial designs, you have a client, and then I discovered graphic design, started my study of typography and everything”, he revealed.
The painting teacher, however, only discovered how to make a living from what he truly enjoys after choosing to pursue a career that involved more freedom of creation and less rigidity in the result.
“After almost ten years of working with other people’s identities, I began to develop my own identity. From my own research and a lot of time painting, I started to find a Brazilian side, of vernacular writing, and this emerged and brought my own aesthetic, and then I developed my own style with many years of work”, stated Grimaldi.
Beginning and surprise by the enormous success
A CNN Grimaldi said that his journey through the networks was inspired by an influencer who has nothing to do with the world of arts: the streamer Casimiro.
“In October last year, I was looking at the new formats [de publicação] and I realized that the photos no longer delivered as they used to. At the time I really liked watching Casimiro. I looked at those videos of Casimiro and said ‘it’s really cool the way the guy reacts organically watching that for the first time’”, said the painting teacher.
“I mentioned this to my partner and she, who works in this area too, said: ‘look, something that would be cool, perhaps since you are a painting teacher, would be you reacting to painting videos explaining techniques by saying things’. I did one test, I did two tests, I did three tests, and then suddenly it started delivering to people,” she added.
With 20,000 followers at the time and already gaining some recognition in the artistic scene, the lyricist saw his idea quickly go viral.
“That one [a ideia] it actually broke out in the fifth video. It was delivered to a million people. People started coming from all over Brazil, of all ages and all types of people not necessarily linked to art. That’s when I realized that the bubble had been punctured”, explained Grimaldi.
The increase in video views created a “chain of engagement” that involved the now influencer, artists and followers.
“I maintained the consistency of making three videos a day and this led to the three reacted artists recording other videos for me to react, and that started to make things circle. People started recording videos for me to react. That started converting a lot of followers for those who were reacted and a lot of followers for me,” she said.
Surprised by the recognition, the visual artist admits that he did not expect such success.
“I was not prepared for the path this took and so nowadays I have completely lost control of the situation. I receive 120 videos per day [para reagir], I am recognized on the street. Sometimes I meet people on the street and they love me, they have developed an affection for me because of these videos, I didn’t expect that”, said the influencer.
Grimaldi also said he believes that users identified with his video due to the naturalness and lightness that he reacts to other people’s work, in addition, of course, to his catchphrases.
The emergence of “Cry, Photoshop!”
The catchphrases even gave identity to Grimaldi’s videos and helped him boost the reach of his publications. The main one is “Cry, Photoshop!”, always said at the end of the videos, when the artists do the famous “zoom out” and show their work in an open camera.
However, was the phrase pronounced the first time naturally or was it something that was already part of the painting teacher’s vocabulary?
“Before I was an artist, I was a designer and when I graduated in graphic design, Photoshop was the goose that laid the golden eggs. Everyone wanted to master that tool so they could sell the best Photoshop possible to people. And I did the opposite”, explained Grimaldi.
“I saw it as a tool and started going to the analog side. I started studying calligraphy, I started studying photography, I started watching, studying video, film, that kind of thing, and I went to a more manual side, as an artisan, as a painter, as a letterer. While narrating a video, I was in that ‘cry with this’, ‘cry with that’ thing, and one day I looked and the guy did some work that had a result very close to a digital illustration, and I said ‘Cry Photoshop,’” he continued.
The phrase was well received by users and many began to comment on publications using it and other phrases also frequently said by Grimaldi in the videos.
“People said ‘man, Chora Photoshop is incredible, incredible, incredible’. I noticed that people thought of some of the things I said and threw them in my lap, like, ‘it’s really cool that you speak carefully and manually’, ‘it’s really cool that you say it, I’ll copy it’. And I said this organically, people started repeating it and it ended up entering the narration. Nowadays, all narrations come out with a little catchphrase because it was built that way”, he added.
The promotion of unknown Brazilian artists: objective or coincidence?
Recognition for his promotional work on Instagram transformed Grimaldi into an important figure in the Brazilian artistic world. This is because her videos reach thousands of users who have never had access to the art production process, be it visual or not.
In addition to the public, Brazilian artists themselves, many of them unknown, take advantage of the painting teacher’s success to publicize their work.
Asked if this was always the intention, Grimaldi explained that he discovered he could follow this path as he published the reactions.
“I started reacting to videos from friends and people I knew, not necessarily Brazilians, but from all over the world. As I evolved, I saw that my style of narration was a style of praise, which is different from other reacts out there. My react was to strengthen the community [artística]as I already strengthen being a teacher and lyricist”, he said.
Then the visual artist decided to maintain the recording style.
“[Eu pensei] ‘I’m going to praise this person’s work, the videos that I think are bad, I’m not going to do them, I’m going to start doing just cool work’. When you open Instagram every day and see a cool video with someone narrating, praising you, it gives you comfort. You say ‘wow, what a cool thing this is’, and people really interact with me and identify with me because they would also like to praise what they are seeing”, he added.
It was at that moment that he realized he could help Brazilian artists in a more direct way.
“From the moment it started to convert [financeiramente] for artists, I prioritized Brazilian art. I thought ‘I’m going to prioritize people who live here in an underdeveloped country where art is often marginalized’. So there were people, for example, supermarket posters, who are people who earn minimum wage a month and do a ton of jobs. I started looking at it and said ‘well, if I react to a poster, the guy will take an order, the guy will be grateful to me, the guy will be stronger. And that really happened”, assured the painting teacher.
“When I started reacting to people who didn’t have a thousand followers, it started to go to a place where my followers looked and said ‘wow, this guy is an artist, a marginal artist’. This is because the guy is on the margins of society, the guy is in a gap where no one can see. They are often artists who are in invisible work. The guy making the pedestrian crossing, the guy painting supermarket posters, the guy making a banner that you see on the street. And these people began to shine in the places of great artists, alongside great artists. So, I realized that if we put everyone in the same place, people would react in the same way to everyone, and this gave people a voice, it gave people a voice to go there and comment ‘his work is really cool, I’m going to hire him. he’. And it really converted, right?”, he concluded.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m Robert Neff, a professional writer and editor. I specialize in the entertainment section, providing up-to-date coverage on the latest developments in film, television and music. My work has been featured on World Stock Market and other prominent publications.
