O Bastardo, born in 1997 in Mesquita, Baixada Fluminense, on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is a painter whose large-format figurative canvases place Black subjects at the centre of a visual language rooted in urban culture, Afro-Brazilian spirituality, and the everyday gestures of belonging and self-determination.
Beginning with graffiti at the age of fifteen, O Bastardo developed a hybrid painting technique that fuses gestural composition with the graphic precision of street art, building layered surfaces in which stylised portraits, symbolic patterns, and references to Candomblé and Orixá iconography coexist with the visual codes of hip-hop culture and fashion. His works render visible what is too often marginalised: the bodies, dignity, and spiritual strength of Brazil's Black population.
O Bastardo participated in the working residency at KORNFELD Galerie Berlin from October to December 2025, resulting in Rhythm & Skin, his first solo exhibition in Europe, presented at 69salon from January to February 2026.
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The King of Samba, 2025 Sold
O Bastardo was born in 1997 in Mesquita, a city in the territory of Baixada Fluminense, on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he continues to be based, living and working between Rio de Janeiro and Paris. He began making art through graffiti at the age of fifteen. His formal training took him through the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro and subsequently to the Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he deepened a practice already shaped by the visual culture of the street and by the autobiographical urgency of his own experience growing up on the periphery of one of Brazil's most unequal cities. In 2023, he became a member of the curatorial committee of the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, a position that reflects both his institutional standing within the Brazilian art world and his ongoing commitment to the institution that shaped his early formation.
O Bastardo's paintings develop a hybrid visual language that merges gestural composition with the graphic structure of urban art. On vividly coloured, often irregularly applied backgrounds, he constructs stylised figures, symbols, and recurring patterns, with drawn elements remaining visible across the surface to preserve a quality of spontaneity and directness. His portraits foreground Black subjects with unapologetic presence, drawing on the everyday gestures of belonging, leisure, and self-esteem that are systematically absent from dominant modes of representation. Series such as Pretos de Griffe and Só Lazer examine consumption and visibility as sites of identity and resistance, while his symbolic vocabulary draws deeply from Afro-Brazilian culture: colours, patterns, and gestures carry dual meanings, functioning simultaneously as markers of personal identity and ciphers of collective memory. Symbols of the Orixá Oxalufan, revered as the creator of the universe and associated with peace, creation, and equilibrium, recur across his compositions as protective presences that permeate the entire pictorial field. His figures rarely meet the viewer's gaze directly, existing instead in a space between pride, melancholy, and spiritual strength. During his Berlin residency, O Bastardo introduced a nuanced spectrum of skin tones into his work, reflecting the complex social fabric of Brazilian society and deepening the conceptual layers of his practice.
O Bastardo's work is held in significant public collections in Brazil and internationally, including the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP), São Paulo; the Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro; the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; the AFRICANA Art Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland; and the Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art, Rizhao, China. His institutional exhibition history is equally substantial. Solo exhibitions include O Bastardo: o retrato do Brasil é Preto at the Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro (2023), a landmark presentation at one of Brazil's foremost public art institutions. Major group exhibitions include Brasil Futuro: as formas da democracia at the Museu Nacional da República, Brasília (2023); Quilombo: vida, problemas e aspirações do negro at Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho, Minas Gerais (2022); Histórias Brasileiras at MASP, São Paulo (2022); Brasil MAR Collection + Enciclopédia Negra at the Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro (2022); Contramemória at the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo (2022); and Crônicas Cariocas at the Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro (2021).
O Bastardo participated in the working residency at KORNFELD Galerie Berlin from October to December 2025. The residency resulted in Rhythm & Skin, his first solo exhibition in Europe, presented at 69salon, Berlin, from 15 January to 28 February 2026. The exhibition brought together works produced during the Berlin residency alongside recent paintings made in Brazil, including Ocean (2025), The King of Samba (2025) and Waiting for My First Love(2026). Simultaneously, O Bastardo was also featured in the group exhibition Rhythm & Soul at KORNFELD Galerie Berlin. His work was also presented at Art Cologne Palma de Mallorca 2026, the inaugural edition of the fair, where KORNFELD Galerie Berlin presented a focused group of artists. His practice continues to expand its reach across Europe and beyond, carrying with it the visual and spiritual force of an Afro-Brazilian generation that insists on its right to be seen.
