Between 1967 and 1973, Darel Valença Lins immersed himself in a symbolic universe that mirrored the Cold War. The tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, the specter of nuclear holocaust, and the space race permeated his work, in which angels and gears emerged as ambiguous figures: sometimes saviors, sometimes threatening. In them, Darel captures the perplexity of a world divided between progress and apocalypse, also echoing the cries of the streets of 1968. A mirror of a time in turmoil, his work was commented on by Clarice Lispector: "Beauty and nightmare mark Darel's work. The helpless shock of the individual before the machine. The dark cities where the occasional window with a light on attests to their inhabitation. Psychoanalyzed or not, he is a great artist, and I must speak of the resplendent mystery of his work. From it emanates, as much in the engraving as in the oil painting and drawing, the great mystery of living."