Efrain Almeida, the Brazilian artist who explored Catholic iconography, sexuality and folk culture, has died.
Birds were a reoccurring motif to his wood and bronze sculpture. Both the chic hummingbird or friendly red-headed soldadinho-do-araripe are common features to the artist’s native Ceará, in the northeast of the country. These were imbued in his carving with an otherwordly presence, as if, in their recollection of votives, they had become messengers from the afterlife. ‘Religion,’ however, he stated in an interview in 2001, ‘only interests me in a conceptual way, especially the ideas of punishment and grace… the ideas of sadness, of melancholy.’
The artist himself would also appear in his work, in nude and unsparing self-portraits made using the carving traditional to the arte popular workshops he was familiar with from childhood.
Almeida studied at Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro under Beatriz Milhaze, and his recent solo exhibitions include O Jardim, MON – Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil (2024); Encarnado, Centro Cultural do Cariri Sérvulo Esmeraldo, Crato, Brazil (2023); O Sexto Dia, Museu de Arte Sacra de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2022); and A Memória da Mão, MCO Arte Contemporânea, Porto, Portugal (2018).
