Fish
Fish with open mouths and bared teeth have been in the work of Chico da Silva since the walls at Praia Formosa. They rarely come alone: they swallow smaller fish, share the background with birds and snakes, or take on the head of another creature.
Fish, from the wall to the studio
Fish were among the drawings Jean-Pierre Chabloz saw on the walls in 1943, “somewhat monstrous”, in his words. The titles in the 1961 exhibition include Peixe Taquari e os Anões, Peixe Paragó and Iracema e Seus Peixes, and in 1963 the magazine O Cruzeiro published a Peixe-Estrela Comendo Sardinha. In 1985 the writer Eduardo Campos recalled that the fauna the painter put on card was mostly fish.
In the works in the collection, the mouth is the center of the drawing: open, full of teeth, often with a forked tongue. The body is built up from bands of scales, strokes, hearts and disks like small suns, and the striped fins are shaped like leaves. In Fish (1973), a large fish fills the canvas, surrounded by small fish.
The motif passed whole to the disciples. Maria Augusta painted Fantastic Fish in 1973, one of the few canvases signed by a disciple in the master’s lifetime. Babá filled the Instituto Oboé canvases with fish, as in Fish and Birds, and Garcia, the last disciple, painted Catfish and Dragon Fish in 2024.