When does an individual artistic style become a way of painting? The case of the naïve artist Chico da Silva

Abstract

The present article seeks to problematize the phenomenon of dissemination of Chico da Silva (1910-1985) singular painting style between a legion of anonymous artists in Ceará in the 1960s. The analysis starts from the internal order of the painter’s work for an external dimension, considering as means of understanding both the plastic and stylistic elements present in the canvases, and the context of inscription of this artistic work. By extending his production to the collective ateliers, involving third parties in the rendering process of his canvases, Silva allowed the insertion of people who had never had contact with him, conforming a great number of anonymous in manufacturers of professional pictures. It is the particular conditions of the naïf production field, as well as Silva’s formal synthesizing process, operated on the basis of the intensification of the pictorial market, which will allow the entry of people distant from official aesthetic circuits into a dynamic of artistic production.