Chico da Silva

Catalogue of works

Chico da Silva

Painter of the fantastic, Pirambu School, Fortaleza

Francisco Domingos da Silva (1910–1985), known as Chico da Silva, was a self-taught master of Brazilian naïve painting whose roosters, fish and fantastic beasts earned an honourable mention at the 1966 Venice Biennale. From the Pirambu neighbourhood of Fortaleza he gathered a circle of painters that became known as the Pirambu School.

Paintings →Biography →

Cockfight, Chico da Silva, 1983Cockfight, 1983

Selected works

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The painter

A man in a striped polo shirt, seen in profile, holds a fine brush to the leg of a large creature painted in gouache: a curved beak, a round eye, a segmented crab-like body and a wing with a fan-shaped, patterned tail. The sheet rests against a plain wall. Black and white photograph.
In profile, he retouches with a fine brush the leg of a creature with a curved beak and a fan-shaped tail, painted on a large sheet propped against the wall.Photographer unidentified.
  1. 1910Born in the Alto Tejo, in the forests of Acre
  2. 1943Discovered by the Swiss painter Jean-Pierre Chabloz
  3. 1963Gathers the circle that became the Pirambu School
  4. 1966Honourable mention at the 33rd Venice Biennale
  5. 1985Dies in Fortaleza

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The Pirambu School

The essay on the school →

From late 1963 his house in Pirambu worked as a collective studio: the young painters of the neighbourhood learned the craft there, each at one stage of the same canvas, and paintings left the house at a pace no single hand could keep.

Essays

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Essays on the life and work of Chico da Silva, written from period sources: newspapers, books, interviews and the collection itself.

  1. 01The Caboclo of the Alto Tejo
  2. 02The Murals of Praia Formosa
  3. 03Jean-Pierre Chabloz and the Discovery of Chico da Silva
  4. 04The Pirambu School
  5. 05Venice, 1966
  6. 06The Painting Factory
  7. 07The Final Years
  8. 08The Instituto Oboé and the Pirambu Revival
  9. 09Garcia, the Last Disciple
  10. 10Babá, the First Disciple
  11. 11Claudionor, the Draughtsman
  12. 12Chica da Silva, the Painter's Daughter
  13. 13Ivan de Assis, the Cinema in the Bestiary
  14. 14Maria Augusta, the Girl Who Signed
  15. 15Primitive, Naïve, Indigenous
  16. 16Legacy and Rediscovery

João Cunha Collection

The collection holds gouaches and acrylics by Chico da Silva, from the late 1960s to the last canvases of 1983, together with the work of his circle: a gouache Maria Augusta signed in 1973, the canvases of the Pirambu revival, and the ones Garcia paints today.

Every painting is photographed in high resolution and opens in a deep-zoom viewer, with its catalogue entry, a description written for blind visitors and a persistent identifier to cite.

Photographs free to reuse, with credit →

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