Miriam Inez da Silva (1937, Trindade, Brasil — 1996, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) drew much of her visual imagery from her childhood memories in Trindade, the city where she was born in the state of Goiás. Her paintings depict scenes of weddings, circus shows, popular festivals, children’s games, winged beings and images of syncretic and mystical religiosity, for which Trindade is renowned, through a gaze that finds the fantastic in small-town daily life.  

Her woodcut and painting production attests to her appreciation for artisanal manufacturing techniques, such as those used by local artisans to create the ex-votos that filled the “Sala dos Milagres” (Hall of Miracles) of the Trindade Mother Church. Miriam stated that these artists’ works influenced her as much as Ivan Serpa, one of her Painting Technique and Criticism teachers at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the 1960s. Serpa — founder of the Grupo Frente, and whose experimentation took him from Concretism to Abstractionism — encouraged Miriam’s aesthetic investigations, and the relationship they established marked the artist’s career.

Miriam began her artistic training at the Escola de Belas Artes da Universidade de Goiás in Goiânia in 1955. At the start of the next decade, she relocated to Rio de Janeiro and enrolled on the engraving course at the Instituto de Belas Artes do Estado da Guanabara in 1962. During this period, the artist focused on creating woodcuts and participated in the Três jovens gravadores (Three Young Engravers) exhibition (1962), held at Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, attracting the attention of art critics and institutions, introducing the artist to the art circuit. Living in Rio de Janeiro, Miriam has lived alongside artists from different strands of Brazilian art. Her visual vocabulary ranges from pop to geometric abstraction.

In 1964, she began participating in significant national exhibitions such as the 1st Exposição da Jovem Gravura Nacional, organized by Walter Zanini at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP, São Paulo, and touring several Brazilian states. She also began exhibiting her engravings and paintings alongside renowned artists such as Ivan Serpa, Alfredo Volpi, Sergio Camargo, Maria Leontina, Carlos Zilio and Rubens Gerchman. Her engravings were featured in prestigious group exhibitions such as the Bienal de São Paulo (1963, 1967) and the Bienal da Bahia, Salvador, in Brazil (1966, 1968), and the Bienal de Gravura de Santiago, in Chile (1969).  

In the early 1970s, Miriam began dedicating herself to oil painting on wooden panels. She developed a distinctive aesthetic, incorporating colorful geometric borders into the pictorial surface to resemble frames, as well as curved shapes in the top corners to suggest curtains in a theatrical performance. Alongside references to popular culture, Miriam incorporated art history iconography into her work and addressed contemporary culture by portraying idols such as Rita Lee, Raul Seixas, Madonna and John Lennon, as well as literary characters such as Gabriela from Jorge Amado’s novel. Miriam represented in her paintings the multiplicity of Brazilian culture, whose diversity she valued. In many ways, her works clashed with the conservatism that kept the country under military rule.

Her compositions of figurative elements against a white background allude primarily to the prints and woodcuts that illustrate Cordel literature. By combining figurative and geometric registers that suggest a performative space, Miriam has given her works a rhetorical dimension. The appropriation of popular language from the Cordel tradition also suggests a narrative construction with characters and events that reflect the Brazilian cultural imagination of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

Almeida & Dale is pleased to join Miriam Inez da Silva’s family in representing and promoting the artist’s work, in partnership with Travesía Cuatro (Spain and Mexico).

Her work has been presented at highly significant exhibitions, including two editions of the Exposição Jovem Gravura Nacional (1964, 1966) at MAC USP, where she won the Acquisition Prize; as well as the Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna at MAM Rio de Janeiro (1968, 1970). From the mid-1970s onwards, Miriam Inez da Silva’s work began to attract international attention. Her work has been exhibited in galleries in London, UK; Mexico City, Mexico; Paris, France; and Montreal, Canada. In 1979, she donated one of her paintings to the Gallery of Naïve Artists, Slovenia. This was to mark the 12th Meeting of Naïve Artists of Yugoslavia. More recently, her works were features in group shows such as Histórias brasileiras (2022), Histórias da sexualidade (2017) and Histórias da infância (2016) at MASP, São Paulo, Brazil; the Bienal de Arte Naïf, Sesc Piracicaba, Brazil (1994, 2002); Brasil + 500: Mostra do redescobrimento, São Paulo, Brazil (2000), among many others. Her works are held in the collections of MASP, MAC USP, and the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.