Fantastic Bird

Fantastic BirdChico da Silva · 1973 · Acrylic on canvas
A fantastic bird with a curling crest of peacock-eye spots against a black ground. Fantastic Bird, Chico da Silva, 1973, acrylic on canvas.
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Description for blind and low-vision visitors

A vertical painting on a deep black background showing a stylised fantastic bird that fills the frame. The bird's long neck curls up and over into a sweeping crest dotted with concentric circular eye-spots in green, blue, orange and red. Its rounded body is divided into patterned zones: a mottled orange-and-yellow flank and a green section holding rainbow-outlined hearts. Fine hatched feathers and spiky red, green and blue leaf shapes radiate around it in the naive folk style. The painted signature and date appear in white near the lower centre.

Artist
Chico da Silva
Year
1973
Technique
Acrylic on canvas
Support
Canvas
Dimensions
70 x 49 cm
Motif
Birds
Collection
João Cunha Collection
Signature
FDZILVA, lower center (reversed S)
Photo
Eric Keki
Inventory no.
JCC-008
Article
The Pirambu School

The signature

Detail of the painted signature: «FDZILVA»
The canvas is signed “FDZILVA”, at the center of the lower edge. The S is reversed, so it reads as the artist's usual signature, “F. D. Silva”.

How to credit

Photographs free to reuse, with credit (CC BY 4.0)

Chico da Silva, “Fantastic Bird” (1973). Photo: Eric Keki, João Cunha Collection, CC BY 4.0. https://chicodasilva.org/id/jcc-008

The license covers the photograph, not the painting.

For IIIF viewers