untitled Painting

Joao has built a renowned reputation as a young fine artist. He has taught at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Institute of Classical Architecture, the Art Students League of New York and the New York academy of Art, in addition to being a guest-speaker at several cultural events and private schools in South America and in the USA. He is regarded as one of the foremost Brazilian figurative painters today, and his paintings and portraits hang in both public and private collections on both sides of the Atlantic. While he has few peers in portrait drawing and painting, his real passion is to paint myths and allegories. In his large scale paintings and drawings, he uses the human figure to draw upon specific episodes of contemporary life. Drawing from a personal vocabulary of visual symbols and mythology, the artist creates modern social allegories that not only reflect on the human condition but also juxtapose it with the scientifically fantastical and unreal. His intriguing work manages to be both broadly universal and highly specific. Inspired by the work of the old masters, he explores the movement and the impossibility of the baroque and renaissance compositions and uses it to create artwork that masterfully combines tradition with innovation. His work has been exhibited at prestigious forums globally, including Sotheby's New York; the Uris Center for Education at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Falconer Center in Copenhagen; Miguel Angelo Pucci Museum in Sao Paulo. He lives and works in New York City.