Candido Portinari

Candido Portinari was one of Brazil's most celebrated modernist painters, renowned for his socially engaged murals and canvases depicting the struggles of the Brazilian working class, particularly laborers and migrants of the Northeast. His monumental works, including the 'Guerra e Paz' (War and Peace) panels donated to the United Nations headquarters in New York in 1956, established him as a figure of international stature and a symbol of Brazilian cultural identity. Portinari studied at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro and later in Europe on a scholarship, synthesizing European modernism with distinctly Brazilian subjects and a palette informed by his homeland's vivid landscapes and social realities.