Background
Vik Muniz was born as Vicente José de Oliveira Muniz on December 20, 1961, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He is an only child in a working-class family of Vincente Muniz, a restaurant waiter, and Maria Celeste, a telephone operator.
Vik Muniz
R. Alagoas, 903 - Higienópolis, São Paulo - SP, 01242-902, Brazil
The Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation) where Vik Muniz studied advertising.
Vik Muniz lying on one of his large-scale works.
Vik Muniz in front of his ‘Boy Blowing Bubbles, after Édouard Manet’.
Vik Muniz near one of the portraits from his “Pictures of Garbage” series. Photo by Todd Heisler.
Vik Muniz working on his Shared Roots series.
‘Jacynthe Loves Orange Juice’, one of six works from Muniz’s Sugar Children series which were purchased at Christie's in New York City for $293,000.
R. Alagoas, 903 - Higienópolis, São Paulo - SP, 01242-902, Brazil
The Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation) where Vik Muniz studied advertising.
The Ordem do Ipiranga Vik Muniz received in 2010.
‘Jacynthe Loves Orange Juice’, one of six works from Muniz’s Sugar Children series which were purchased at Christie's in New York City for $293,000.
Vik Muniz lying on one of his large-scale works.
Vik Muniz in front of his ‘Boy Blowing Bubbles, after Édouard Manet’.
Vik Muniz near one of the portraits from his “Pictures of Garbage” series. Photo by Todd Heisler.
Vik Muniz working on his Shared Roots series.
Vik Muniz was born as Vicente José de Oliveira Muniz on December 20, 1961, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He is an only child in a working-class family of Vincente Muniz, a restaurant waiter, and Maria Celeste, a telephone operator.
Although Vik Muniz was taught reading by his grandmother, Ana Rocha, as a child, he had some problems with writing at school, so, he often communicated by drawings. It was in a high school when Muniz started exploring art through the books from the school library.
At the age of fourteen, Vik Muniz won a partial scholarship at an art contest which allowed him to visit an art studio.
After graduating from high school, Muniz entered the Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation) where he studied advertising.
Vik Muniz started his career at the age of 18 when he earned his living redesigning billboards for higher readability in his native Brazil.
In 1983, Muniz made his first visit to the United States and traveled to Chicago. While in the city, he attended the night school where he studied English, Polish, Italian, Spanish, and Korean. To pay for his classes, he cleaned the parking of a local supermarket. After a year in Chicago, Vik Muniz relocated to New York City where he established a studio with the help of his friend and began his career of a sculptor.
During this period of time, Muniz visited a lot of museums, galleries, art spaces, and historical spots to explore the works of various artists. The mosaics of the Church of Saint Patrick Ravena, and the Postmodernists Cindy Sherman, and Jeff Koons had such impact on the artist that he decided to change the medium and turned his attention to paintings.
In 1988, he produced a series of drawings in which he depicted several photos from the Life magazine from memory. In order to make the works closer to their originals, he then photographed them. The first solo exhibition of Muniz’s works took place at Stux Gallery in New York City the following year.
In the middle of the next decade, such uncommon and everyday materials as dust, diamonds, sugar, dry pigment, ketchup, caviar, and wire first appeared on his pictures focused on photojournalism and art history. So, in 1997, Muniz received popularity for the series of pictures he created from chocolate syrup using as a base the art of such artists like Georges Seurat, Vincent Van Gogh, and Hans Namuth whose photograph of Jackson Pollock he recreated. Due to the success, Muniz was chosen to participate at the 24th International Sao Paulo Biennale. In 2001, the artist took part in the 49th Biennale in Venice, Italy as a representative of Brazil.
The chocolate syrup series of 1997 was followed by a great number of other large-scale works from garbage, like Pictures of Cars (after Ruscha), Sugar Children, Pictures in Garbage, and Pictures of Junk among others. In 2010, Vik Muniz initiated a Waste Land project which took place at the biggest landfill site of the world, Jardim Gramacho, situated in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. The artist used recyclable material collected from rubbish by the special staff to produce large-scale mosaic portraits. The works were featured at the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo and displayed at auctions in London. About three years that Muniz dedicated to the project were filmed and made into a documentary.
Since the beginning of his career, Muniz has exhibited his pictures at many notable art spaces in Brazil, the United States and elsewhere in the world, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the International Center of Photography, the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rome, the Tate Modern in London, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Long Museum, Shanghai, and Kasama Nichido Museum of Art in Japan among others.
The latest events of Muniz’s career include the participation in 2016 FotoFest Biennial in Houston, the 2017 show ‘Afterglow: Pictures of Ruins’ in Palazzo Cini, Venice, Italy, 2018 ‘Photography and the Rebirth of Wonder’ at Norfolk’s Chrysler Museum of Art, and the most recent solo exhibition, ‘Real Pictures’ at London’s Ben Brown Fine Arts gallery.
Nowadays, Vik Muniz shares his time between Brooklyn, New York City, and Rio de Janeiro.
Vik Muniz’s unique and unconventional approach to producing portraits, landscapes and still lifes which boggle viewers’ imagination from garbage and everyday materials is recognized internationally. The artist is often named a master illusionist for his ability to transform trivial objects into veritable masterpieces.
The artist has been a recipient of such awards like National Artist Award from Anderson Ranch Arts Center, 'Kaulak' Award for Photography from Villa de Madrid, Annual Creative Competition Award of Excellence from Society for News Design, World Economic Forum Crystal Award, Prêmio Cidadão Carioca, Ordem do Ipiranga, and Medalha da Inconfidência. UNESCO made Muniz its Goodwill Ambassador for his social activism.
The documentary created after Muniz’s Waste Land project won awards of Berlin International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, and Provincetown International Film Festival.
Muniz’s artworks are acquired by a great number of prestigious collection all around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Cartier Foundation in Paris, and Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Italy to name but a few.
One of Vik Muniz’s solo exhibitions at the Modern Art museum of Rio de Janeiro occupies the second place in attendance records to date after Pablo Picasso’s show.
In 2015, six works from Muniz’s Sugar Children series were purchased at Christie's in New York City for $293,000.
A Bar at Folies Bergères, after Édouard Manet
I Wait, after Julia Margaret Cameron
Action Photo, after Hans Namuth
Fairy Roses, after Fantin-Latour
Self-portrait, Back of Head
Haystack #3, After Monet
Portrait of Adeline Ravoux, after Van Gogh
Sick Bacchus, after Caravaggio
Medusa, after Caravaggio
The Card Players, after Cézanne
The Tower of Babel, after Pieter Bruegel
Picking Flowers in a Field, after Mary Cassatt
Starry Night, after Van Gogh
Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Background, after Matisse
Double Mona Lisa, after Warhol
Andy Warhol (From Pictures of Ink)
Almond Blossoms, after Van Gogh
Boy Blowing Bubbles, after Édouard Manet
Brut (Handmade)
Camo (Handmade)
Glitch (Handmade)
Maru (Handmade)
Messy Colour Grid (Handmade)
Microbe (Handmade)
Trap (Handmade)
After Balla (Handmade)
Vik Muniz believes that the art should be accessible not only for elite. He sees his mission as an artist to create images that “reveal their process and material structure”.
From Muniz's point of view, photography has “freed painting from its responsibility to depict the world as fact." What he appreciates the most in artworks is individuality.
Quotations: "Art objects are inanimate sad bits of matter hanging in the dark when no one is looking. The artist only does half of the work; the viewer has to come up with the rest, and it is by empowering the viewer that the miracle of art gains its force."
Vik Muniz is a modest, thought-provoking, and communicative person.
In addition to his career as an artist, Muniz is also involved in the activity which concerns social consciousness. He donated about $50,000 gathered for Pictures in Garbage series at auction in the United Kingdom to the workers collective.
Vik Muniz was married to the artist Janaina Tschäpe.
