Hélio Melo

Hélio Melo (Boca do Acre, AM, 1926 – Goiânia, GO, 2001) was born in the interior of the state of Amazonas and worked as a rubber tapper in Senápolis, Acre, from his teenage years. When he arrived with his family in the state capital, Rio Branco, at the age of 33, the world of the rubber plantations stayed at the center of his imagination and of his work as a painter, a practice spurred by the move to the city.

Most of his works are set in forests and peopled by animals and humans, mostly rubber tappers going about their daily tasks. The forest itself is treated as a subject, a living organism, depicted at different moments and in shifting nuances of color and light. Behind these picturesque images, though, lies the artist’s wish to voice his discontent with the erosion of the rubber plantations’ way of life and with the violent conversion of forests into pastureland.

Fantastic beings, some from the collective imagination of the rubber plantations and others invented by the artist, fill his paintings and add to their mythical character. The artist treats the social transformations that changed the lives of rubber tappers with irony, both in the imagery itself and in some of the titles.

In 2006, Hélio Melo’s work was given a special room at the 27th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo. More recently, it was included in the Bienal das Amazônias in Belém (2023) and in the group exhibition Histórias Brasileiras (Brazilian Histories) at MASP (2022), as well as in the solo exhibition Hélio Melo at Almeida & Dale in 2023. He became Acre’s most prominent artist, and the state government named the Teatro Hélio Melo in his honor. His work is held in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; MASP; Museu de Arte do Rio – MAR; and Museu Acreano de Belas Artes, among others.