Paintings
Paintings by Chico da Silva and the Pirambu School, in gouache and acrylic, catalogued in the João Cunha Collection, Fortaleza, Brazil. Every work has an entry modelled on a catalogue raisonné and opens in high resolution.
From the early 1960s Chico da Silva worked with a circle of young painters at his house in Pirambu, a seaside neighborhood of Fortaleza. The group became known as the Escola do Pirambu, the Pirambu School. The paintings here run from his gouaches and acrylics of the late 1960s and 1970s to the canvases his disciples painted in the decades after his death.
Chico da Silva
Roosters, dragons, fish and fantastic birds, in gouache and acrylic, from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.
Maria Augusta
Maria Augusta, the Girl Who Signed →Maria Augusta painted for Chico da Silva from 1965 and began signing her own canvases in 1969. The arrangement in Pirambu was that the master signed, so a canvas from those years carrying a disciple’s name is rare. This one is from 1973.
Sebastião Lima da Silva signs as Babá and was the first of the Pirambu boys to work on a painting by Chico da Silva. He painted the single canvases between 2004 and 2011 for the Instituto Cultural Oboé, a finance house in Fortaleza with a gallery of its own, which brought the disciples back to the canvas two decades after the master’s death. The triptych gathers in one box three canvases painted between 2003 and 2008. All carry a double attribution: Chico da Silva by Babá.
Claudionor
Claudionor, the Draughtsman →José Claudionor Nogueira was the draughtsman of the group: he drew the animal on card for the others to paint in. He spent decades decorating clubs and festivals, then returned to the canvas for the Instituto Cultural Oboé. Almost all of these acrylics are from 2007 and 2008, with a double attribution: Chico da Silva by Claudionor.
Gerardo da Silva
Gerardo da Silva, born in 1972, is the son of the painter Chica da Silva and the grandson of Chico. It was he who introduced Garcia to the Instituto Cultural Oboé. This canvas of roosters, from 1998, came from the institute’s collection and carries his name alone.
Ivan de Assis
Ivan de Assis, the Cinema in the Bestiary →Ivan de Assis drew for Chico da Silva from the first workshop in Pirambu and began signing his own name in the late 1970s. This canvas, painted in 2000, three years before he died, is the one work here in which a painter of the circle leaves the bestiary behind: figures, fruit and a basin, in a manner of his own.
Garcia is the last painter of the original Pirambu circle still alive and still at work, and he learned beside Chico da Silva in the 1960s. The three polyptychs, two of four small canvases and one of nine, each set in one box, were finished in 2006, in the years he painted for the Instituto Cultural Oboé, and carry a double attribution: Chico da Silva by Garcia. The canvases of 2024 and 2025 bear his signature alone and are the most recent paintings in the collection.
