Bandeira

Antônio Bandeira (1922 – 1967) was a Brazilian painter and draftsman. He is one of the most valued Brazilian painters and has works in the largest private collections in museums in Brazil and the world. Still in Ceará, he took part in the founding of the Cearense Cultural Centre for Plastic Arts (1940). In 1945 he moved to Rio de Janeiro in the company of Jean-Pierre Chabloz, Raimundo Feitosa and Inimá de Paula, and exhibited with them at the Askanasy Gallery. In 1946, he travelled to Paris and began a brilliant career with exhibitions in Brazil, Europe and the United States. In Paris, he became friends with Wols, a friendship that, according to Bandeira’s own testimony, was fundamental to his artistic development. According to Flávio de Aquino, it was in “informal, lyrical, free abstraction, wise but without geometric calculations, that Bandeira’s true talent was born”. In 1995, the São Paulo Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro inaugurated a retrospective exhibition of his work curated by Vera Novis.