Prado, Vasco (1914–1998)

Vasco Prado (b. 16 April 1914; d. 9 December 1998), Brazilian sculptor and engraver. Born in Rio Grande do Sul, Prado received a grant from the French government that allowed him to study in Paris under the French painters Fernand Léger and Étienne Hadju. Upon his return to Brazil in 1950, Prado, along with Carlos Scliar, Glenio Bianchetti, Danúbio Gonçalves, and Glauco Rodrigues, founded the Clube de Gravura (Engraving Club) in Pôrto Alegre in 1950. This group supported social realism, an artistic movement rejecting romanticized and idealized subject matter and favoring an unadorned art with a political content.

Prado's repertory draws heavily from regional themes, focusing primarily on the life and customs of the gaucho from the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. One of his best-known engravings, Dead Soldier, was executed for the Third Gaucho Congress in Defense of Peace (1951). In 1962 he won first prize in a competition for a monument to the composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. In 1965 there was a one-man exhibition of his sculpture at the Galería de Arte in São Paulo.

See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arte no Brasil, vol. 2 (1979), pp. 842-845.

Dawn Ades, Art in Latin America (1989), p. 354.

Additional Bibliography

Baldino, Angela. Vasco Prado escultor. Porto Alegre, Brazil: Organização Odebrecht, 2001.

Masina, Léa. A geração de 30 no Rio Grande do Sul Porto Alegre, Brazil: Editora da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, 2000.

                                      Caren A. Meghreblian