Ant?nio Maia

(b Carm?polis, 9 Oct 1928). Brazilian painter. He began painting while still living in his native state of Sergipe in north-eastern Brazil and was deeply affected by his native region. After moving to Rio de Janeiro in 1955 he briefly adopted an abstract style, but in 1963 he returned to images of everyday life and popular religion in the north-east. He particularly favoured symbolically charged images of wooden ex-votos (arms, legs, hands, hearts and especially heads) depicted with a technical virtuosity that deliberately eschewed primitivism (Walkers, 1968; Curitiba, Mus. A. Contemp.). Visits to the United States in 1968 and to Europe (1969-72, staying longest in Barcelona) widened his contact with international art but did not draw him away from his own Brazilian subjects. In 1974 the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto acquired a series of paintings by him.

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