Djalma Cunha dos Santos—also known as Samanta, Djalma d’Airá, or Djalma do Alegrete—was a multidisciplinary artist, working as a costume designer, carnival designer, set designer, illustrator, and poet, as well as a draftsman and painter. His paintings are maximalist and vividly colored. His body of work is both a didactic and aesthetic legacy of the times in which he lived and embodied his orisha. Through his paintings, Djalma invited the spiritual entities he worked and lived with into the world—into exhibitions, museums, homes, and streets. As a host of deities, he honored and recorded their stories and manifestations.
The first Black artist to graduate from the Institute of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Djalma’s life and career were deeply marked by the intersections and tensions between art and issues of race, class, sexuality, and spirituality.
Jandiro Koch
Djalma do Alegrete (Brazil, 1931-1994) was an artist, painter, illustrator, costume designer, set designer, teacher, vitrine designer, carnival designer, dancer, singer, and poet. He graduated from the Instituto de Bellas Artes (IBA), now the Instituto de Artes of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, in 1957. Working with watercolor, collage, crayon, oil, and pastel, Djalma developed a vast visual production focused on figurative work, in which portraits stand out. His works are in public collections in Rio Grande do Sul, including MARGS and MAC-RS. Djalma moved between the states of Rio Grande do Sul and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
