Mario Cravo Neto was born April 20, 1947 in the city of Salvador, Bahia, where he
presently lives and works. Brought up in the artists' milieu of his home town,
he was introduced to sculpture and photography at the age of seventeen. During
this period his father, sculptor Mario Cravo Júnior, invited to take part in
the "Artist in Residence" program sponsered by the Ford Foundation
and the Senate of West Berlin, traveled with his family to Germany. In Berlin, besides
dedicating most of his time to creative work, Mario Cravo Neto experienced
close contact with artists and intelectuals from all over the world.
Family travels to Spain
and Italy
to visit sites and museums and direct contact with artists such as Emilio
Vedova and photographer Max Jakob broadened the horizons of the young
Mario Cravo Neto, who returned to Brasil in 1965 to complete his secondary
education. He moved to New York in 1968 to
study at the Art Student League under the guidance of Jack Krueger, one of the
precursors of the Conceptual Art movement in New York. The two year period of study was
of fundamental importance in delineating his future course as a man and as an
artist. A series of color photographs entitled "On the Subway" were
for the first time published at Camera 35 magazine and the black and white
photographs depicting aspects of human desolation in the large metropolis date
from this period.
In his Soho studio parallel
to his photographic work, he developed tri-dimentional works based on the
"terrarium" process, which involves growing plants in a sealed
environment. He returned to Brasil in 1970 and premiered a large installation
of the living sculptures created in New York at the XII Bienal of São Paulo,
followed by several one man and group exhibitions in Brasil and abroad. As a
result of an automobile accident on March 31- 1975, Mario Cravo Neto, bedridden
with both legs broken, was forced to interrupt his professional activities.
After one year of convalescence, hindered from giving continuity to his prior
research, he began focusing his attention on staged studio photography, using
people and ordinary found objects on his photography and tri-dimentional work
as well.
The works that the artist has been showing in Brasil and
abroad are an outgrowth of this period of his artistic career. Besides his work
on black and white photography, Mario Cravo Neto is also working in color for
his book project on the body in the bahian landscape.