Lives and works in Camanducaia, Minas Gerais, Brazil
A multidisciplinary artist, Nilda Neves studied accounting and was a math teacher, merchant and hairdresser, among other professions, before dedicating herself to the visual arts and literature. Her work is closely linked to memory: each figure, animal or landscape on her canvases corresponds to her memories and her life in the sertão. The almost fifty years that the artist lived in the interior of Bahia left her with an imaginary universe based on the richness of the vegetation and fauna of the Bahian backlands. Now living in Camanducaia, in the Serra da Mantiqueira region of Minas Gerais, Nilda continues to use the Bahian backlands and their stories as the axis of her production. With an oratory permeated by sonorous semantics, Nilda also echoes her landscapes through her words, having published two books - O Belo Sertão (2010) and O Lavrador do Sertão (2011).
Among her exhibitions, she has had the following solo shows: Nilda Neves: do sertão à lua, at the Museu Nacional da República (Brasília, 2023); Nilda Neves: visagens e assombros do sertão, at Central Galeria (São Paulo, 2023); Sertão em devaneios, at Centro Cultural Santo Amaro (São Paulo, 2019); Narrativas do sertão, at Face Gabinete de Arte (São Paulo, 2018); and Meu Sertão, at Galeria Mezanino (São Paulo, 2015). Among the group exhibitions are: A noite dos clarões: ecos do surrealismo e outras cosmologias, at Flexa Galeria (Rio de Janeiro, 2024); E o Palhaço, quem é!?, at the Paço das Artes (São Paulo, 2024); Serra da Capivara: pedra viva, o legado de Niède Guidon, at the Museu Brasileiro de Escultura e Ecologia (São Paulo, 2022); Now, at the Museu Inimá de Paula (Belo Horizonte, 2022); Alegria, uma invenção, at Central Galeria (São Paulo, 2022); Modernismo desde aqui, Paço das Artes (São Paulo, 2022); Tudo o que você me dá é seu, Central Galeria (São Paulo, 2020); O Sagrado na Arte Moderna Brasileira, Museu de Arte Sacra (São Paulo, 2019); as well as several editions of the Bienal Naïfs do Brasil, Sesc Piracicaba (2020, 2018 and 2016). Her work is in the collections of the Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro, the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Sorocaba and the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo.