Brodósqui, 1903 – Río de Janeiro (Brasil), 1962
By Francisco Alambert
Portinari held his first solo exhibition in 1929 at the Palace Hotel in Rio de Janeiro. He spent some time in Paris, where he met his wife, Maria Victoria Martinelli. In 1931, he returned to Brazil and, in 1934, painted Despejados (Evicted). A year later, he received the second Honorable Mention at the Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh (USA) for his painting Café (Coffee). Between 1935 and 1939, he taught at the University of the Federal District in Rio de Janeiro, where he also created frescoes for the Ministry of Education and Health building, depicting various activities of Brazilian rural workers.
In 1939, Portinari created three large panels for Brazil’s Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. That same year, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York acquired his painting Morro do Rio (Rio Slum), the only work by a South American artist included in the exhibition of the greatest paintings of the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1940, he participated in a collective exhibition of Latin American art at the Riverside Museum in New York and held two solo exhibitions: one at the Detroit Institute of Arts and another at MoMA, titled Portinari of Brazil. In 1942, he created a mural for the Hispanic Foundation of the Library of Congress in Washington, the same year he encountered Picasso’s Guernica, which deeply impacted him.
Portinari ventured into politics in 1945, running for Congress with the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), but he was not elected. That same year, he began the controversial mural São Francisco se Despojando das Vestes (Saint Francis Renouncing His Clothes) for the altar of the Pampulha Church in Belo Horizonte. In 1946, he held his first exhibition in Paris at the Charpentier Gallery and was awarded the French Legion of Honor. Between 1948 and 1949, he lived in exile in Uruguay due to tensions following the PCB’s ban. After participating in the Venice Biennale in 1950, he held numerous exhibitions across Europe. In 1951, he was honored with a special gallery at the inaugural São Paulo Biennale. In 1952, he created the panel A Chegada da Família Real Portuguesa à Bahia (The Arrival of the Portuguese Royal Family in Bahia) for the State Bank of Bahia.
In 1954, commissioned by the Banco Português do Brasil, Candido Portinari created the mural Descobrimento do Brasil (Discovery of Brazil). That same year, he experienced the first symptoms of paint-related poisoning. In 1955, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Best Painter of the Year by the International Fine Arts Council in New York and received a dedicated gallery at the III São Paulo Biennale. At the time, he faced sharp criticism from advocates of abstractionism, which was gaining prominence in Brazil. In 1956, he exhibited in Israel, and his most famous mural, Guerra e Paz (War and Peace), was installed at the United Nations headquarters in New York. In the same year, he began writing his memoirs, which were later published as Retalhos de Minha Infância (Fragments of My Childhood).
In 1957, he held exhibitions in Paris and Munich. In 1958, he participated in the exhibition 50 Years of Modern Art at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where his painting Enterro na Rede (Burial in a Hammock), part of the Retirantes (Migrants) series, was recognized as one of the hundred masterpieces of the century. That year, he also received a special gallery at the First Biennale of Plastic Arts in Mexico City, and in 1959, the Fifth São Paulo Biennale presented a retrospective of his works.
Prohibited from using paints on medical advice, he traveled to Paris, where he wrote poetry, but soon resumed painting. In 1961, his health deteriorated, and he passed away the following year while preparing a major exhibition commissioned by the Milan City Council.
