Coming from Recife, he spent a short time in Rio de Janeiro studying painting. Still in Rio, he held his first solo exhibition. In 1937, he moved to Paris, where he lived all his life. He became friends with Picasso and the poet Paul Éluard, and came into contact with Surrealism. From the 1930s onwards, he exhibited regularly in Brazil and abroad. Roberto Pontual wrote about his career in Paris in 1988: “Undoubtedly, towards the end of the 1920s, there were other pioneers among us with a certain surreal stance: Tarsila and Ismael Nery. The important thing, however, is that Cícero’s surrealism came to complete, with them, a triangle whose riches have yet to be critically explored to the end.” In 1997, Casa França-Brasil opened a major retrospective of his work in Rio de Janeiro.
Public Collections
Instituto Cícero Dias, The Centre Pompidou, Museu Nacional de belas Artes, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires – MALBA, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museu Nacional da República, Museum of Modern Art Aloisio Magalhães, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil – RJ and Museu Oscar Niemeyer.
