Kennedy Bahia

Kennedy Bahia became known for his cheerful and colorful tapestries, as well as his paintings and engravings of beautiful mulattoes. In the 60s and 70s, Kennedy Bahia, who was a great friend of the writer Jorge Amado, was considered one of the greatest upholsterers in Brazil, with his collection Fauna e Flora da Bahia, from 1973. Born Patrick Maderos Kennedy Dito, in 1929, in Valparaiso - Chile, Kennedy Bahia was a mining engineer in his country. He first came into contact with the exoticism of Brazilian flora and fauna when he went to work in the Amazon region, first looking for gold in the Bolivian jungle and later, on the territory Brazilian, in the upper Tapajós - Amazonas. While recovering from malaria, the Chilean engineer began making tapestries. Impressions of the jungle, however, never left him and his works are characterized by the use of Amazonian fauna and flora. When he moved to Bahia in the 1960s, he also began to include folk motifs from Afro-Bahian culture in his works.