His life

The afro-Brazilian painter Wilson Tiberio was born on November 24th, 1920 at Porto-Alegre in Brazil within a family of six children.
Very early, his passion for drawing became manifest. He used to copy pictures.
His father could not bear to see his son being engrossed in this activity which took an ever growing part in the young boy's life.
When his mother, at the age of thirty eight, died from tuberculosis, he was just nine years old and remained unconsolable.
The remarriage of his father, some years later, made this event a more painful loss. His attraction to  Art sharpened, the family violence also. The corporal punishments and beatings meted out to this son who wanted to become a painter, were more and more frequent. At the age of sixteen, he ran away and left  his family for good.
He began his artistic career in Rio, Bahia, Sao Paulo where he exhibited his works which drew inspiration from the social life of the afro-Brazilian population: local dances, favellas or shanty-towns, portraits of those reduced to silence, non-existence in oppression and poverty outside  Brazilian society.
Rites: Voodoo, Macumba which were the major subjects of his first paintings  led to his quest to discover his African roots.
The opportunity to be able to reach this Source was given to him during an exhibition  where his works drew the attention of a cultural attaché of the French embassy. He was offered a grant for the year l947-1948, and so he came to Paris to perfect his painting technique.
Paris was the point of departure in his discovery and  knowledge of Africa. He stayed  in diverse countries where Art got involved in  politics. Colonial Africa showed him its hostility : he was deported. Neo-colonial Africa  only wore a mask which quickly slipped to reveal the same face. In Ivory Coast the same fate befell  him.
In 1966, the Festival of  Negro Arts in Dakar welcomed him warmly. He stayed five years in  Senegal. The cantor de la Négritude expelled him for political motivations.
But Africa always remained at the heart of his artistic concerns for its beauty and its struggles. Indeed, it is ubiquitous throughout his painting and sculptures.
From 1971, he stayed for a long time in Italy, in Rome where he pursued his work in his artistic quest.
Enriched by his African experience where the world's echos, in particular, those of Latin America resound, he protested and demonstrated with his brush. A large painting on  torture in Brazil came into being in 1973.
In the late eighties, he came back to France. He lived in the Vaucluse where he died on July 20th, 2005.
His ashes lie in the Montparnasse cemetery  in Paris.
He left two daughters, Gisèle and Sonia