An important figure in Brazilian painting, Cícero Dias is marked by his dual allegiance to Brazilian Modernism and the École de Paris, at the crossroads of two continents and two eras. For many, he was the last great name of Brazilian pictorial modernism.
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.