De Francesco

De Francesco, José – (Rio Grande, RS, 1895) – Porto Alegre, RS, 1967), painter, set designer and writer. Son of Italian parents. He was a disciple of the painter Giovanini and the sculptor Tonietti, before joining the former Institute of Fine Arts and Conservatory of Porto Alegre, where he studied with Libindo Ferraz, Francisco Bellanca and Eugenio Latour. He also received teachings from Pedro Weingartner, Augusto Luís de Freitas and Francis Pelichek. He performed scenarios for theaters andand held solo exhibitions in Valparaíso (Chile), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Montevideo (Uruguay) and in Brazil, in Livramento, Uruguaiana, Bagé, Cruz Alta, Santa Maria, Santo Ângelo, Rio Grande, Jaguarão, São Leopoldo, Tacuarembó, Dom Pedrito, Santa Vitória, all in Rio Grande do Sul. In São Paulo, he exhibited in the capital, Campinas and Presidente Vargas. As theatrical author, he wrote at Rio Grande na Ponta’s Magazine (1917); O Louco(1918), staged by the Vittor Sohne Company, in the former Coliseum later in Talia; Arrede que lá vai cabo (1922).He also wrote Gaucho Tales,Ilha dos Dragões, Ao despertar da Aurora, Falência Humana, Ela Vendeu o Corpo, O Homem que Esqueceu o Mundo, Aplausos e Lágrimas, Reminiscences of an Artist, which is an autobiography, leaving among others the following references: Perhaps he was one of our visual artists that more individual exhibitions did between us and in the platinum countries, in a total of almost a hundred shows. Primitivist and childish painter, he dedicated himself to gauchesque regionalism on the one hand and to the childhood that set in its memorable cycle of cirandas and battalions of its block, painted processions that were a taste, as well as the southern kerbes, all under a deformation, primitivism and captivating infantilism. The folk painting, the folk-themed and simple and simplistic processes have duly valued folk art not only in authentic pottery, but also in raw painting.