Candido Portinari was a painter, muralist, engraver, illustrator, teacher and a central figure in the history of Brazilian art. The themes he explored, and the quality of his iconographic production made him one of Brazil’s most popular painters, with great international recognition. Between 1919 and 1921, he attended the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro. In 1928, he won a travel award, which allowed him to study in Europe, a major step in the career of Portinari, who admired both the great Renaissance masters and avant-garde painters. When he returned to Brazil in 1931, he worked intensely, addressing aspects of Brazilianness and producing works that denounced human suffering caused by social injustice. In his paintings, Portinari portrayed children, workers, migrants, folk festivals, characters and types, in different contexts and different geographies.  

In 1935, he received an award from the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh for the painting Café (1934), making him the first Brazilian modernist to receive an international award. In 1939, he created three large panels for the Brazilian Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair, depicting the Brazilian regions. In the same year, the MoMA, in New York, acquired his painting Morro do Rio (1933) and, in 1940, organized the exhibition Portinari of Brazil. In the same year, the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro held the largest Portinari exhibition to that date. In 1956, Portinari inaugurated the Guerra e Paz panels (1953-1956), produced for the United Nations headquarters in New York.  

Portinari’s works have been featured in numerous group exhibitions in Brazil and abroad, such as the Bienal de São Paulo (1951, 1955, 1959, 1973, 1985, 2004) and the Venice Biennale (1950, 1954, 2024). The artist has been the subject of solo shows and retrospectives, the most recent being Portinari popular, organized by the MASP, São Paulo, Brazil (2015) .His works are part of Brazilian and international institutional collections, such as MoMA, USA; Center Pompidou, France; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Argentina; MASP, Brazil; Museu de Arte do Rio; Brazil; Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP – MAC USP, Brazil; Pinacoteca de São Paulo; Brazil; among others. 

Works by Portinarican be found in important buildings in Brazil and around the world. His tile panels and frescoes adorn the Gustavo Capanema Building, former headquarter of the Ministry of Education and Culture (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); the Pampulha Church (Minas Gerais, Brazil), and the Washington DC Library of Congress (USA).