Alcides Pereira dos Santos

Outsider artist Alcides Pereira dos Santos, born in the rural state of Bahia, came from a life of farm work, and tried his hand at the crafts of shoemaking, barbering and stonemasonry, before taking up painting at the age of nineteen. Deeply religious, Pereira dos Santos’ first paintings reflected nature’s life-giving properties, and the mutual relationship between man the earth.The serenity of his landscapes of the 1970s remained unchanged in the 1980s and 1990s, but they were accentuated by the graphics and geometry of his work, in which the human being—as in the 1970s—is a small figure in the composition, since the subject of interest is the entire landscape as a macrocreation.

When Alcides moved with his daughter to a shantytown in the city of São Paulo, the change of landscape had a huge influence in his work. Coming from a place where nature was abundant, the impact of a large city affected him significantly and he began painting imaginary machines and means of transport. He took part in numerous exhibitions in Brazil, the last one at the São Paulo Biennial Foundation in 2000. 

Courtesy of Galeria Estação