Catalogue Raisonné Chico da Silva
The Catalogue Raisonné Chico da Silva project aims to document the artist’s full body of work, ensuring the preservation of his artistic, historical, and cultural legacy.
As part of its commitment to promote recognition and enhance the visibility of his entire artistic production, the project will also catalogue the artworks created by the Pirambu School, a space for collective training and production that has contributed to the diffusion of culture and income generation for the population of that community. Whilst documenting every artist and their contributions, the project intention is therefore to reconcile and integrate relevant knowledge into institution’ context and region.
The inventory efforts will enable the recognition of Chico da Silva’s artistic production in its distinct phases and particularities, providing essential information such as historical context, bibliography, exhibitions, awards, and provenance, which will therefore ensure that each artwork is accompanied by precise and accessible reference information.
Chico da Silva was born surrounded by the Amazon rainforest in Alto Tejo, but while still a child he moved to Ceará, in northeastern Brazil, passing through some countryside cities until he settled in Fortaleza in 1935, where he lived until his death. While painting the whitewashed walls of the fishermen’s houses in Praia Formosa, his artistic production began. Da Silva gave shape and color to his drawings with pieces of charcoal, bricks, leaves, and other elements found around him.
Jean-Pierre Chabloz (1910, Lausanne, Switzerland – 1985, Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil), a Swiss critic and artist who moved to Brazil in 1940 because of World War II, traveled to Fortaleza for work in 1943, where he found da Silva’s drawings on a visit to the beach. This encounter had great relevance in the consolidation and dissemination of Chico da Silva’s work, opening doors for him to circulate in the main urban centers of Brazil, such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and throughout Europe, in cities such as Geneva, Neuchâtel, Lausanne, and Paris.
In his gouaches and paintings, Chico da Silva represented mainly the creatures of the forest, such as Amazon birds and fish, as well as fanciful figures, such as dragons. His artworks give form to stories and mythologies from the oral tradition of the culture of Northern Brazil, in compositions marked by rich polychromy and by the graphic details of the drawing, composed of colorful wefts and lines. Given the originality of his style and compositions, he stood out in the context of the so-called Brazilian popular art and, in addition to achieving great commercial success during his lifetime, he attracted considerable interest from critics.
Among the major exhibitions he has participated in are: Francisco da Silva, Galerie Pour L’Art, Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1950; Exposition d’Art Primitif et Moderne [Exhibition of Primitive and Modern Art], Musée d‘Ethnographie, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1956; 8 Peintres Naïfs Brésiliens [8 Brazilian Naïve Painters], Galerie Jacques Massol, Paris, France, in 1965; 9ª São Paulo Art Biennial, Brazil, in 1967; Tradição e Ruptura: Síntese de Arte e Cultura Brasileiras [Tradition and Rupture: Synthesis of Brazilian Art and Culture], Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil, in 1984; Histoires de voir, Show and Tell, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, France, in 2012; Raio-que-o-parta: ficções do moderno no Brasil, Sesc 24 de Maio, São Paulo, in 2022; 1ª Bienal das Amazônias, Belém, in 2023; Chico da Silva e o ateliê do Pirambu, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, in 2023. In addition, in 1966 he received the Honorable Mention award for his participation in the 33rd Venice Biennale.
Currently, his works are part of numerous public collections, among them: Museo del Barrio, New York, USA; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro - MAM, Brasil; Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo – MAC USP, Brasil; and Musée International d’Art Naïf Anatole Jakovsky, Nice; Tate, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Pinacoteca de São Paulo.