São Bento de Macurituba, Brazil, 1962.
Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Lives working in Rio’s universe, despite Fernando Mendonça’s provincial origin, he has a cosmopolitan soul, which is evident in his works. His art mixes surprise and originality, being one of the most important contemporary visual artists.
Born on April 4th, 1962 . From São Bento Bacurituba, extremely poor village of Maranhão state, youngest in a family of eight children, which soon was forced to move to the capital of São Luís, where his father saxophonist and his mother artisan, seamstress and homemaker, searched for new horizons to educate and provide better opportunities for their children. Since his childhood Fernando Mendonça expresses artistic skills, scribbling in school books, for absence of other ways, what costed him two consecutive failings.
Mendonça had completed high school. He then began his artistic education in 1978 when he joined the group “Laborarte” (important in the cultural life of São Luís in the 70s and 80s). Had his first solo exhibition in 1984, the same year that met the renowned artist Rubens Gercheman, who encouraged him to search for better days in a larger urban center: Rio de Janeiro. In the following year (1985) follows the advice of his mentor and moves to the Wonderful City (Cidade Maravilhosa, a nickname for Rio de Janeiro).
Now, Fernando Mendonça has significant accomplishments in his resume that demonstrate his talent and registers the quality of his artistic expression. Lives working in Rio’s universe, despite his provincial origin, has a cosmopolitan soul, which is evident in his works. His art mixes surprise and originality, being one of the most important contemporary visual artists.
By Ferreira Gullar, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2009:
“Fernando Mendonça is one of those unquestionable vocations, someone who was born to be a plastic artist. At the current stage embarked in the field of woodcuts which is, by definition, art of artisan indeed, and, in the modern era, with Expressionism, became the pursuit for what is most genuine in a artist. Fernando Mendonça, in this series of engravings, give us prove of this pursuit of the genuine, that confuses itself with the deliberate poverty of the ways of expressing itself. By engraving in fruit crates and by exploring a common theme of the everyday, he manages to touch us with the simpleness of the forms he invents.”
By Ronaldo Britto, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2009:
“Look is a form of action, involvement of the artist with what is around. At first, this voracious look claims for physical actions: disassemble the apple’s crates, to withdraw their boards and fix with a simple stylus, dispersed flagrants of life which, juxtaposed, will never come to compose a scene in the classic, static sense of the term. Everything here expresses movement, starting by this long and thin planks, that repeats instinctively the shapes of the street. And the carver’s characteristic gesture, furrowed, incisive, becomes almost fluid: quick and casual, redeems our everyday chaos.”
