Portinari's Works Arrive in Beijing for First Exhibition by a Brazilian Artist at Chinas Main Museum

Fifty-six works by Candido Portinari are on display at the National Museum of China in Beijing, in the first exhibition by a Brazilian artist at the country’s main museum. The exhibition is part of the Brazil-China Cultural Year, a diplomatic initiative established by Lula and Xi Jinping in 2024.

The choice of Portinari to represent Brazil is not accidental. Chinese familiarity with his work comes less from aesthetic similarities and more from thematic convergence: the experiences of migrants, poverty, and rural or peripheral communities as settings — a historical experience shared by both nations. Works such as "The Retreatants" directly dialogue with 20th-century Chinese paintings, such as "Refugees" by Jiang Zhaohe.

"Portinari’s visual language is not unfamiliar to Chinese audiences, at least not to those familiar with China’s 20th-century artistic tradition," says Guo Cunhai of the Institute of Latin American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Curator João Candido Portinari, the painter’s son, selected works covering his father’s lyrical, social, folkloric and religious phases. Although a member of the Brazilian Communist Party, Portinari resisted doctrinaire socialist realism. According to historian Annateresa Fabris, "his choice of realism has nothing doctrinaire about it."

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