Nuit, 1989

Sérgio Ferro  

Sérgio Ferro is a Brazilian architect and painter born in Curitiba, Brazil, in 1938. Today he lives and works between Grignan, France and Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. He is a painter, architect and professor forced to move to France by the dictatorship in his country ; during thirty years he has built a complex body of work.

He graduated from the University of São Paulo with a degree in architecture in 1962 and completed his post-graduate studies in 1965 in Museology and Urban Evolution. From 1962 to 1968, he taught composition and visual arts at the Escola Superior de Desenho of Sao Paulo, art history and aesthetics at the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo and architecture at the Universidade de Brasília.

He founded an architecture office with Rodrigo Lefebre and later Flavio Imperio joined them. He is in contact with the libertarian movements which are opposed to the dictatorship in Brazil and is close to the ALN (Aliança Libertadora Nacional). Exiled for political reasons from his country for 30 years, Ferro taught at the Grenoble School of Architecture from 1982 to 1997, and during this time he devoted himself to painting, and produced especially murals (in Villeneuve and at the Joseph Valier school) ; he also worked on canvas and developed his own style of "contemporary mannerism".

Sérgio Ferro's paintings can be found in museums worldwide, especially in Brazil and France. He earned an international reputation thanks, in particular, to the Waldir Peres Simões gallery. He works on commission, completing large-scale compositions, especially for the Igreja de Fundadores in Curitiba, the Memorial of the 5th Centenary of Brazil, or the Universidade Positivo do Paranã.