Talk – João Cândido, Luciara Ribeiro, and Vilanismo – Vilanismo celebrates João Cândido

On November 30, the talk Vilanismo celebrates João Cândido, with João Cândido, Luciara Ribeiro, and Vilanismo, will take place. The event features the participation of Rafa Black, representing Vilanismo, and runs from 2 pm to 4 pm in the Invocations space on the second floor of the Pavilion.

Through an intergenerational conversation in the visual arts between master João Cândido and members of Vilanismo, we will celebrate the artist’s legacy by revisiting key moments in his career and discussing the importance of establishing physical spaces to safeguard his archive. The talk will be moderated by Luciara Ribeiro.

João Cândido da Silva was born into a family of 18 siblings raised by Dona Maria, an embroiderer, homemaker, and visual artist from Sorocaba, in the countryside of São Paulo. Married to a railroad laborer, she migrated to a small town in Minas Gerais, where her first children were born, including João Cândido. Faced with hardship and deprivation, Maria and her children decided to move to the city of São Paulo in search of a better life. When they arrived at Estação da Luz in the early 1940s, the children had to sleep in a dance hall because the relatives who lived in the city did not show up to welcome them. João Cândido says his first impressions of São Paulo filled him with a certain fear. Until then, he had been accustomed to a rural landscape, entirely different from the streetcars and towering buildings that made up the urban scenery before him. From an early age, João Cândido showed interest in the arts. While his mother worked on her paintings and sculptures, he drew with charcoal on the house walls. To prevent Cândido from continuing the “mess,” Dona Maria began giving him leftover paints and old brushes. From there, he embarked on his first experiences with oil and acrylic paints, applying them to whatever supports he could find. His favorite themes include popular festivities and cultural expressions such as boi, capoeira, soccer, Carnival, and folia de reis. Although painting is his most frequent medium, the artist is also a sculptor, working with wood, paper, annealed wire, and other materials. João Cândido da Silva is the brother of the primitivist painter Maria Auxiliadora (1935–1974), the family’s most renowned artist. In 1977, he welcomed the director of the São Paulo Museum of Art, Pietro Maria Bardi, into his home in São Paulo’s North Zone. The visit aimed to finalize details for the publication of the book Maria Auxiliadora da Silva, with texts by Max Fourny, director of the Musée d’Art Naïf de l’Île in France, and Emanuel von Lauenstein Massarani, Brazil’s cultural attaché in Switzerland.

Luciara Ribeiro (1989, lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil) is an educator, researcher, and curator. Born in Xique-Xique, Bahia, she lives between São Paulo and Goiânia. She holds an MA in Art History from the University of Salamanca (USAL, Spain, 2018) and from the Graduate Program in Art History at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP, Brazil, 2019). She has a BA in Art History from UNIFESP (2014) and a technical degree in Museology from the Escola Técnica Estadual de São Paulo (ETEC/SP, 2015). She contributes to Contemporary And América Latina and the online platform Projeto Afro. She is a faculty member in the Visual Arts Department at Faculdade Santa Marcelina and at the Centro Universitário Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado. She coordinates the curatorial, education, and research sectors of Sertão Negro Ateliê e Escola de Artes.

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Talk – João Cândido, Luciara Ribeiro, and Vilanismo – Vilanismo celebrates João Cândido
36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice
Nov 30, 2025
Sun, 2 pm
Invocations space, 2nd floor
Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo
Parque Ibirapuera, gate 3
São Paulo, SP
free admission