Biography

Victor Arruda (1947) was born in Cuiabá, Mato Grosso. At the age of 14, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he studied museology, specializing in contemporary art. His artistic path was influenced by his travels around the world. He traveled to Paris in 1973. A year later, he decided to spend some time in London, another remarkable experience for his work.

In 1977, with his brother José Roberto Arruda, he created Saramenha Gallery. The first solo exhibition of his work was held in 1981, at the Anna Maria Niemeyer Gallery, Rio de Janeiro. From then on he exhibited several times in Rio and also in Brasilia, Salvador, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte and São Paulo. In 1982, he became the coordinator of the children’s section of the exhibition A Margem da Vida and taught fine arts at the Lemos de Brito Penal Institute. Invited by Oscar Niemeyer, he painted the foyer panel of the theater of the Latin America Memorial in São Paulo in 1989.

Sexuality. Exposing social hypocrisy. Personal life. These three features are constant in Vitor Arruda’s work. Over the course of five decades of activity, he has dealt with the imposition of more or less subtle limits on the exhibition of his work. Art must be conceptual, without concessions, in which pornographic, rough, and crude elements serve as an opening for internal and social discussion. Other relevant references in his artistic work include elements of psychoanalysis, of the deconstruction of reality. The goal of these films is not only to question the role of the so-called normal person, but also to oppose the concessions stipulated in society and to point the finger back at the establishment of those concessions. Faithful to his own instincts, Vitor Arruda maintains a coherent and exorbitant trajectory.

His work is represented in prominent private and public collections mainly in Brazil. Among these are the Museu de Arte Moderna Rio de Janeiro (MAM), the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, in Niterói (Rio de Janeiro) and the Museu de Arte de Santa Catarina (MASC), in Florianópolis.