Cícero Dias

Cicero dos Santos Dias (Escada, Pernambuco, 1907 - Paris, France, 2003). Painter, engraver, draftsman, illustrator, set designer and teacher. Starts drawing studies in his homeland. In 1920, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he enrolled in architecture and painting courses at the National School of Fine Arts (Enba) in 1925, but did not conclude them. He got in touch with the modernist group and, in 1929, collaborated with the Revista de Antropofagia.

In 1931, in the Revolutionary Hall, in Enba, exposes the controversial panel, both in its size and in the theme, I Saw the World... It Started in Recife. From 1932, in Recife, he taught drawing in his atelier. Illustrates, in 1933, Casa Grande & Senzala, by Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987). In 1937, he was arrested in Recife when the Estado Novo was decreed. Then, encouraged by Di Cavalcanti (1897-1976), he travels to Paris where he meets Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger and Pablo Picasso, of whom he becomes a friend. In 1942, he was arrested by the Nazis and sent to Baden-Baden, Germany. Between 1943 and 1945, he lives in Lisbon as Cultural Attaché of the Brazilian Embassy.

He returns to Paris where he integrates the abstract group Espace. In 1948, he made the mural of the building of the Secretary of Finance of the State of Pernambuco, considered the first abstract work of the genre in Latin America. In 1965, he was honored with a special room at the São Paulo International Biennial. Inaugurates, in 1991, panel of 20 meters in the Brigadeiro Station of the Subway of São Paulo. In Rio de Janeiro, the Sala Cicero Dias is inaugurated at the National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA). Receives from the French government the National Order of Merit of France, in 1998, to the 91 years.