Preparatory drawing for mural painting
Cândido Portinari (full: Cândido Torquato Portinari) (Brodowski, December 29, 1903 - Rio de Janeiro, February 6, 1962) was a Brazilian painter.
He was born in a coffee farm in the interior of the state of São Paulo and spent his childhood in the small town of Brodowski. Like many Brazilians at that time, his parents were Italian immigrants.
As a result of a poor family, he only followed primary school. Yet, from his childhood, he showed his artistic vocation and his low education did not prevent him from acquiring a place in the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes (Rio de Janeiro) in 1918. In 1928, he finished first in a competition and won a trip to Paris where he would stay until 1930.
In the year of his return, he met the nineteen-year-old Uruguayan Maria Victoria Martinelli with whom he would share the rest of his life. In 1931 he began to paint the portraits in order to maintain his young family. In 1935, with his work, CAFÉ participated in an exhibition of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, where it honors an honorable mention. The painting shows a coffee plantation as it was common in the region in which he lived.
He became a member of the Partido Comunista Brasileiro and became elected senator in 1947. Because of the persecution of Communists he had to flee to Uruguay shortly thereafter. He returned to Brazil in 1951 but during the last 10 years of his life he was suffering from a bad health.
Portinari died of lead poisoning at the age of 58. He was preparing a large exhibition of 200 works at the invitation of the municipality of Milan. The lead compounds in his paint have eventually become fatal.
His work is located in the Museu de Arte Moderna, the Museo de Arte de São Paulo and in the United Nations headquarters in New York.
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