Silva, José Antônio da (1909–1996)

José Antônio da Silva (b. 1909), Brazilian painter. Born in the interior of the state of São Paulo, Silva gave up his life as a rural agricultural laborer and at the age of thirty-seven, moved to São José do Rio Prêto, where he taught himself painting. Iconoclastic, with a contempt for art critics, Silva did a painting entitled Hanging the Critics. For his first three compositions, he won the first prize at a local exhibition whose jury, ironically, was composed of several important art critics.

While early works such as Houses in the Rain have an impressionistic look, later paintings were more radical and expressionistic. Examples of these latter include Roundup, Crucifixion, Swimmers, and Demon Stampeding the Herd. In his best-known work, The Cotton Harvest, for instance, painted in 1949, Silva attained dramatic effects by his unconventional use of color and bold composition. His paintings document his own life as well as that of the history of Brazil. He participated in a number of São Paulo biennials and exhibited his works outside of Brazil, including the 1954 Hispano-American Biennial in Havana and two Venice bienalles. In 1967 he founded a museum in São José do Rio Prêto in which he housed old baroque artwork from the local area, paintings of other artists, and those of his own. Silva is the author of The Romance of My Life (1949) and two novels, Alice and Maria Clara. In 1980, the Museu de Arte Primitivista 'Jose Antonio da Silva' was founded in Rio Prêto. From 1999 to 2001, many of his works of art were housed in the Teatro Municipal there. He died in São Paulo in 1996. In 2002, the Museo de Arte Primitivista opened a permanent exhibition of his works, entitled "Silva: Imagens e Meios."

See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aquino, Flávio de. Aspectos da pintura primitiva Brasileira. New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1978.

Bach, Susan. Imagens populares. Rio de Janeiro: S. Bach, 1986.

Fundação Nacional De Arte, Pinacoteca do Estado—São Paulo (1982), pp. 138-139.

Rodman, Selden. Genius in the Backlands: Popular Artists of Brazil (1977), pp. 54-73; Arte no Brasil, vol. 2 (1979), pp. 828-829.

Silva, José Antonio da, et. al. Silva: Pinturas, 1947–1995. São Paulo: Pinacoteca, 1998.

                                    Caren A. Meghreblian