Vintage 1940s Candido Portinari "The Coffee Bearers" Art Print

A 12" x 9" reproduction of Candido Portinari The Coffee Bearers as a part of a late 1940s collection of the "World's Great Paintings" with title and commentary on reverse and in the description below. This specific art print was in print while the artist was still living.

Portinari was born of poor Italian immigrant folk in the heart of the coffee plantations of Brazil. At the age of fifteen he left home to study at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro, where he worked at all sorts of odd jobs to keep himself alive. In 1923 and again in 1925 his paintings won prizes, and in 1928 he was awarded a fellowship to complete his studies in Europe. He travelled about the continent and married a Uruguayian girl, but otherwise Europe seems to have meant very little to him. Then back in Brazil he began painting like one possessed, sometimes finishing as many as four paintings a week. He had come home to his roots, to the red earth of the coffee plantations and the poor folk he knew, for his inspiration.

In 1935 his painting, Coffee, won an honorable mention at the Carnegie International show. Two years later he became Professor of Painting at the University of the Federal District and was commissioned to decorate the new Ministry of Education building. A tremendous worker, he executed the commission in two years. At the same time, besides working on the huge frescoes, he exhibited 269 original works at the Museum of Fine Arts in Rio and completed three big panels for the Brazilian pavilion at the World's Fair in New York City. Today Portinari is recognized as the greatest painter of Brazil. The Coffee Bearers is in the collection of Mme. Helena Rubinstein of New York.

Candido Portinari (1903-1962) 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.