Best known for the giant fish, sea serpents, colorful birds and otherworldly beings which populate his creations, Chico da Silva’s Two Horses, executed in 1970, illustrates two mares against a sunny yellow backdrop. Rendered in side profile with hooves bucking out and tongues flared, this dynamic duel is enlivened by the rich patterns and jewel tones the artist uses to portray the horses fur.
A Brazilian artist of Indigenous descent, Francisco da Silva, known as Chico da Silva or simply “Chico”, was painting the walls of fishermen’s houses in the 1940s when the Swiss art critic Jean-Pierre Chabloz first encountered his exceptional work. Fascinated by this self-taught artist, Chabloz saw in da Silva a genuine and rare talent and began promoting his works in Brazil and abroad. Over time, da Silva achieved international fame, being invited to represent Brazil at the prestigious Venice Biennale in 1966. At a time when modernism and neoconcretism dominated the Brazilian art discourse, da Silva remained true to his folkloric style.
Perhaps da Silva’s greatest legacy was not just his artwork but his contribution to the Pirambu community, one of the poorest favelas in Fortaleza. In the 1970s, da Silva founded what came to be known as the Pirambu School. There, he not only taught painting techniques to local youth but inspired them with the same spirit of creative freedom and reverence to nature that permeated his own work; the studio became a space of experimentation and collective learning. The present work was likely a product of the Pirambu school, evidencing the artist’s hand and that of his students.
After da Silva’s death in 1985, his work fell into relative obscurity, only to be rediscovered decades later. In 2023 the artist was the subject of a posthumous retrospective at the Pinacoteca of São Paulo, and in 2024, an international exhibition at Massimo de Carlo, Paris, introduced his work to the European public, solidifying his place in the pantheon of great Latin American art masters.
