O lavrador de café

Candido Portinari was one of the most important Brazilian painters and also a prominent and influential practitioner of the neo-realism style in painting. Born to Giovan Battista Portinari and Domenica Torquato, Italian immigrants from Veneto, in a coffee plantation near Brodowski, in São Paulo, Portinari studied at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro. In 1928 he won a gold medal at the ENBA and a trip to Paris where he... stayed until 1930, when he returned to Brazil. He joined the Brazilian Communist Party and stood for senator in 1947 but had to flee Brazil for Uruguay due to the persecution of Communists by the dictatorship of General Eurico Gaspar Dutra. He returned to Brazil in 1951 but suffered ill health during the last decade of his life and died in Rio de Janeiro in 1962 of lead poisoning from his paints. His career coincided with and included collaboration with Oscar Niemeyer amongst others.
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