Background
Cildo Meireles was born on February 9, 1948 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His father, who encouraged Meireles' creativity, worked for the Indian Protection Service and their family traveled extensively within rural Brazil.
Cildo Meireles was born on February 9, 1948 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His father, who encouraged Meireles' creativity, worked for the Indian Protection Service and their family traveled extensively within rural Brazil.
He began his study of art in 1963 at the District Federal Cultural Foundation in Brasilia, Brazil, under the Peruvian painter and ceramist Felix Barrenechea.
In 1967 he moved to Rio de Janeiro and studied at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes.
Cildo Meireles was only 19 years old when he participated in his first art exhibit, at the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, in Salvador.
Drawing was his main artistic medium until 1968, when he altogether abandoned expressionistic drawing in favor of designing things that he wanted to physically construct. Meireles began his "Virtual Spaces" project in 1968. That project was sought to show how objects in space can be defined by three different planes.
Moreover, he was one of the founders of the Experimental Unit of the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro in 1969 and in 1975, edited the art magazine "Malasartes".
Also at this time, Meireles made his first installation "Eureka/Blindhotland" (1970-1975), which, by his own account, “dealt with the difference between appearance and reality.”
Meireles' most recent exhibition took place in Milan's Hangar Bicocca museum from March 27 to July 20, 2014. It featured twelve of his most renowned works.
Meireles currently lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.
Meireles unintentionally participated in a political demonstration in April 1964, when he was sixteen years old. He has cited this moment has his "political awakening" and began to take an interest in student politics.
Following that military coup, Meireles became involved in political art. When Meireles was first getting started as an artist, governmental censorship of various forms of media, including art, was standard in Brazil.
In the early 1970s he developed a political art project that aimed to reach a wide audience while avoiding censorship called "Insertions Into Ideological Circuits", which was continued until 1976. Many of his installation pieces since this time have taken on political themes, though now his art is less overtly political.
Cildo Meireles was one of the founders of the Experimental Unit of the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro in 1969.
From an early age, Meireles showed a keen interest in drawing and spatial relations. He was especially interested in how this has been explored in animated film.