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Cleo

"I was always passionate about design. I worked for many years as an illustrator of comic books and for the advertising industry.

"From design I moved on to sculpture, spending six years practicing in the Brazilian Society of Fine Arts under the guidance of master Jaime Sampaio, but it was a very expensive technique. I ended up painting because of its practicality, and I really enjoyed it. Later I joined together with other artists who began to exhibit their works on the streets of Ipanema, initiating an established Hippie Market of Ipanema, where more than 200 artists congregated every Sunday.

"I am from an epoch in which the artist always sought to perfect himself, to take courses and enrich his technique before calling himself a professional painter. He painted for love. Today many artists think only about selling, worried little about the content of their work.

"Thirty years ago I began painting and exhibiting my work in the cities where I lived, like Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais and in Sao Paulo. I am impassioned by the human figure. I always portray people in movement, in everyday actions replete with beauty. I like to impress dynamism upon my canvases - man was not meant to be standing still. What influences my work is political consciousness. For many years I painted sad themes, reflective of a social condition experienced for many years under the military dictatorship of Brazil. As I suffered firsthand the persecution of the institutions of political control, because some of my family was involved in student militarism, my artistic expression reflects this experience."

PRINCIPAL EXHIBITIONS:

Palácio Guanabara, seat of the government of Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Revez Gallery, Toronto, Canada
Salão de Artistas Plásticos do Rio de Janeiro - Hotel Nacional, RJ

PERMANENT EXHIBITIONS:

Galeria de Artes Simas - São Paulo, SP
Galeria de Artes Cobrasol - Florianopolis, SC
Galeria de Artes Fênix - São Paulo, SP
Mural in the municipal town hall of Marica, Rio de Janeiro