The Most Famous
PAINTERS from Brazil
Top 9
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Brazilian Painters of all time. This list of famous Brazilian Painters is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Tarsila do Amaral (1886 - 1973)
With an HPI of 53.92, Tarsila do Amaral is the most famous Brazilian Painter. Her biography has been translated into 21 different languages on wikipedia.
Tarsila de Aguiar do Amaral (Portuguese pronunciation: [taʁˈsilɐ du ɐmaˈɾaw]; 1 September 1886 – 17 January 1973) was a Brazilian painter, draftswoman, and translator. She is considered one of the leading Latin American modernist artists, and is regarded as the painter who best achieved Brazilian aspirations for nationalistic expression in a modern style. As a member of the Grupo dos Cinco, Tarsila is also considered a major influence in the modern art movement in Brazil, alongside Anita Malfatti, Menotti Del Picchia, Mário de Andrade, and Oswald de Andrade. She was instrumental in the formation of the aesthetic movement, Antropofagia (1928–1929); in fact, Tarsila was the one with her celebrated painting, Abaporu, who inspired Oswald de Andrade's famous Manifesto Antropófago.
2. Candido Portinari (1903 - 1962)
With an HPI of 53.67, Candido Portinari is the 2nd most famous Brazilian Painter. His biography has been translated into 28 different languages.
Candido Portinari (December 29, 1903 – February 6, 1962) was a Brazilian painter. He is considered one of the most important Brazilian painters as well as a prominent and influential practitioner of the neo-realism style in painting. Portinari painted more than five thousand canvases, from small sketches to monumental works such as the Guerra e Paz panels, which were donated to the United Nations Headquarters in 1956. Portinari developed a social preoccupation throughout his oeuvre and maintained an active life in the Brazilian cultural and political worlds.
3. Pedro Américo (1843 - 1905)
With an HPI of 52.45, Pedro Américo is the 3rd most famous Brazilian Painter. His biography has been translated into 29 different languages.
Pedro Américo de Figueiredo e Melo (29 April 1843 – 7 October 1905) was a Brazilian novelist, poet, scientist, art theorist, essayist, philosopher, politician and professor, but is best remembered as one of the most important academic painters in Brazil, leaving works of national impact. From an early age he showed an inclination towards the arts, being considered a child prodigy. At a very young age, he participated as a draftsman on an expedition of naturalists through the Brazilian northeast, and received government support to study at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. He did his artistic improvement in Paris, studying with famous painters, but he also dedicated himself to science and philosophy. Soon after his return to Brazil, he began to teach at the Academy and began a successful career, gaining prominence with great paintings of a civic and heroic character, inserting himself in the civilizing and modernizing program of the country fostered by emperor Pedro II, of which the Imperial Academy was the regulatory and executive arm in the artistic sphere. His style in painting, in line with the great trends of his time, fused neoclassical, romantic and realistic elements, and his production is one of the first great expressions of Academicism in Brazil in its heyday, leaving works that remain alive in the collective imagination of the nation to this day, such as Batalha de Avaí, Fala do Trono, Independência ou Morte! and Tiradentes Esquartejado, reproduced in school books across the country. In the second half of his career he concentrated on oriental, allegorical and biblical themes, which he personally preferred and whose market was expanding, but this part of his work, popular at the time, quickly went out of fashion, and did not receive much attention from specialists in recent times remaining little known. He spent his career between Brazil and Europe, and in both places his talent was recognized, receiving great favors from critics and the public but also raising passionate controversies and creating tenacious opponents. For the new avant-gardes of his time, Pedro Américo was a painter of undeniably rare gifts, but above all he became one of the main symbols of everything that the academic system allegedly had as conservative, elitist and distant from the Brazilian reality. His great artistic merits make him one of the greatest painters the country has ever produced, and his fame and influence in life, the burning debates he aroused in his institutional, cultural and political performance, in a critical moment of articulation of a new system of symbols for a country just emerging from the condition of colony and of consolidation of a new system of art on modern methodological and conceptual bases, highlight him as one of the most important names in the history of Brazilian culture at the end of the 19th century. He acquired an intellectual sophistication quite unusual for Brazilian artists of his time, taking an interest in a wide variety of subjects and seeking solid preparation. He obtained a BA in Social Sciences from the Sorbonne and a PhD in Natural Sciences from the Free University of Brussels. He was director of the antiquities and numismatics section of the Imperial and National Museum; professor of drawing, aesthetics and art history at the Imperial Academy, and constituent deputy for Pernambuco. He left a large written production on aesthetics, art history and philosophy, where, inspired by the classical model, he gave special attention to education as the basis of all progress and reserved a superior role for art in the evolution of humanity. He won several honors and decorations, including the title of Historical Painter of the Imperial Chamber, the Order of the Rose and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. He also left some poetry and four novels, but like his theoretical texts, they are little remembered today.
4. José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior (1850 - 1899)
With an HPI of 50.45, José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior is the 4th most famous Brazilian Painter. His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.
José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior (8 May 1850 – 13 November 1899), commonly known as Almeida Júnior, was a Brazilian artist and designer; one of the first there to paint in the Realistic tradition of Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet. The "Dia do Artista Plástico" (Day of Fine Artists in Brazil) is celebrated on his birthday.
5. Anita Malfatti (1889 - 1964)
With an HPI of 50.35, Anita Malfatti is the 5th most famous Brazilian Painter. Her biography has been translated into 17 different languages.
Anita Catarina Malfatti (December 2, 1889 – November 6, 1964) is heralded as the first Brazilian artist to introduce European and American forms of Modernism to Brazil. Her solo exhibition in Sao Paulo, from 1917–1918, was controversial at the time, and her expressionist style and subject were revolutionary for the complacently old-fashioned art expectations of Brazilians who were searching for a national identity in art, but who were not prepared for the influences Malfatti would bring to the country. Malfatti's presence was also highly felt during the Week of Modern Art (Semana de Arte Moderna) in 1922, where she and the Group of Five made huge revolutionary changes in the structure and response to modern art in Brazil.
6. Victor Meirelles (1832 - 1903)
With an HPI of 47.78, Victor Meirelles is the 6th most famous Brazilian Painter. His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.
Victor Meirelles de Lima (18 August 1832 – 22 February 1903) was a Brazilian painter and teacher who is best known for his works relating to his nation's culture and history. From humble origins, his talent was soon recognized, being admitted as a student at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. He specialized in the genre of history painting, and upon winning the Academy's Foreign Travel Award, he spent several years training in Europe. There he painted his best-known work, Primeira Missa no Brasil. Returning to Brazil, he became one of emperor Pedro II's favorite painters, joining the monarch's patronage program and aligning himself with his proposal to renew the image of Brazil through the creation of visual symbols of its history. He became an esteemed teacher at the Academy, forming a generation of painters, and continued his personal work by performing other important historical paintings, such as Batalha dos Guararapes, Moema and Combate Naval do Riachuelo, as well as portraits and landscapes, of which the Retrato de Dom Pedro II and his three Panoramas stand out. In his heyday he was considered one of the leading artists of the second reign, often receiving high praise for the perfection of his technique, the nobility of his inspiration and the general quality of his monumental compositions, as well as his unblemished character and tireless dedication to his craft. Meirelles got many admirers both in Brazil and abroad. He received imperial decorations and was the first Brazilian painter to win admission to the Paris Salon, but was also the target of scathing criticism, arousing strong controversies in a period when disputes between academic painters and the early modernists were ignited. With the advent of the Republic in Brazil, for being too linked to the Imperial government, he fell into ostracism, and ended his life in precarious financial conditions, already much forgotten. Meirelles' works belong to the Brazilian academic tradition, formed by an eclectic synthesis of neoclassical, romantic and realist references, but the painter also absorbed Baroque and Nazarene influences. After a period of relative obscurity, recent criticism has reinstated him as one of the forerunners of modern Brazilian painting and one of the main Brazilian painters of the 19th century, for many the greatest of all, being the author of some of the most celebrated visual recreations of Brazilian history, that remain alive in the country's culture and are endlessly reproduced in school textbooks and a variety of other media.
7. Antônio Parreiras (1860 - 1937)
With an HPI of 45.78, Antônio Parreiras is the 7th most famous Brazilian Painter. His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.
Antônio Diogo da Silva Parreiras (20 January 1860, Niterói – 17 October 1937, Niterói) was a Brazilian painter, designer and illustrator.
8. Carlos Latuff (1968 - )
With an HPI of 44.77, Carlos Latuff is the 8th most famous Brazilian Painter. His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.
Carlos Latuff (born 30 November 1968) is a Brazilian political cartoonist. His work deals with themes such as anti-Western sentiment, anti-capitalism, and opposition to U.S. military intervention in foreign countries. He is best-known for his images depicting the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Arab Spring. Latuff's cartoons comparing Israel to Nazi Germany have been labelled as antisemitic by a number of advocacy organizations, which have criticized Latuff's work as attempting to trivialize the atrocities of the Holocaust. Latuff has dismissed the charges as "a strategy for discrediting criticism of Israel" and stated that his drawings, particularly at the 2006 International Holocaust Cartoon Competition in Tehran, were to highlight similarities between the status of Jews in German-occupied Europe and the status of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories.
9. Georgina de Albuquerque (1885 - 1962)
With an HPI of 44.19, Georgina de Albuquerque is the 9th most famous Brazilian Painter. Her biography has been translated into 15 different languages.
Georgina de Albuquerque (February 4, 1885 – August 29, 1962) was a Brazilian Impressionist painter and teacher. She was known for her interest in female subjects. Her husband Lucílio was a noted painter in his own right and the two are strongly associated with each other.
Pantheon has 9 people classified as painters born between 1832 and 1968. Of these 9, 1 (11.11%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living painters include Carlos Latuff. The most famous deceased painters include Tarsila do Amaral, Candido Portinari, and Pedro Américo. As of April 2022, 3 new painters have been added to Pantheon including Anita Malfatti, Antônio Parreiras, and Georgina de Albuquerque.
Living Painters
Go to all RankingsDeceased Painters
Go to all Rankings
Tarsila do Amaral
1886 - 1973
HPI: 53.92
Candido Portinari
1903 - 1962
HPI: 53.67
Pedro Américo
1843 - 1905
HPI: 52.45
José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior
1850 - 1899
HPI: 50.45
Anita Malfatti
1889 - 1964
HPI: 50.35
Victor Meirelles
1832 - 1903
HPI: 47.78
Antônio Parreiras
1860 - 1937
HPI: 45.78
Georgina de Albuquerque
1885 - 1962
HPI: 44.19
Newly Added Painters (2022)
Go to all RankingsAnita Malfatti
1889 - 1964
HPI: 50.35
Antônio Parreiras
1860 - 1937
HPI: 45.78
Georgina de Albuquerque
1885 - 1962
HPI: 44.19
Which Painters were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 8 most globally memorable Painters since 1700.
