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Almine Rech

The estate of  Chico da Silva

Chico da Silva’s first known engagement with art was here, in the 1940s, when he began using black charcoal and natural pigment to draw murals on the exteriors of fishermen’s houses.  In the early 1960s, Chico established the Pirambu School, an informal workshop in which local artists and curious neighbors learned Chico’s techniques, worked as paid collaborators, and, with his support, developed their own bodies of work. These works caught the eye of Swiss art critic Jean-Pierre Chabloz, who, positioning himself as the “discoverer” of the “primitive” painter, assumed a complex role in Chico’s subsequent career, one simultaneously promotional and paternalizing. Chabloz introduced Chico to the gouache, paint, paper, and canvas that soon became his primary materials, and championed Chico’s work to the international art world, facilitating widespread recognition that would culminate with Chico representing Brazil in the 33rd Venice Biennale in 1966. 

The legacy of Chico da Silva, reevaluated belatedly, reveals him not only as a painter of remarkable skill and breadth but as a practitioner for whom working alongside neighbors was the intuitive outcome of a long-established way of life, centered on communal gathering and necessary resource sharing. By forging a practice that rejected the desires and value systems of a mid-century European and American art world, Chico and the Pirambu School established a sovereign Brazilian art as visually stunning as it was assertive in its resistance to colonial intervention. 

Chico da Silva has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including the recent large-scale presentation Chico da Silva e o ateliê do Pirambu at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2023). Other solo exhibitions include Chico da Silva: Conexão Sagrada, Visão Global, at the Museu de Arte Sacra de São Paulo (2022); Chico da Silva at Gomide&Co (2022); Chico da Silva - O Renascer 100 Anos, at the Centro Cultural dos Correios in Fortaleza, Brazil (2010); Retrospectiva Chico da Silva: do delírio ao dilúvio at the Espaço Cultural do Palácio da Abolição in Fortaleza, Brazil (1989), among many others. His work has been featured in group exhibitions such as O Sagrado na Amazônia at the Centro Cultural Inclusartiz in Rio de Janeiro (2023); Brazilian Fantasies at the International Museum of Naïve Art Anatole Jakovsky in Nice, France (2016); Brasileiro, Brasileiros at the Museu Afro Brasil in São Paulo (2005), among many others. His work is held in the permanent collections of institutions including the Centre Pompidou in Paris; Tate in London; Pinacoteca de São Paulo; El Museo del Barrio in New York; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates; Museum of Art in Rio de Janeiro; and the Edson Queiroz Foundation in Fortaleza, Brazil, among others. 

  • Biography

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  • Bibliography

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Gallery exhibitions