Miguel Penha Chiquitano (Cuiabá, MT, Brazil, 1960) lives and works in Chapada dos Guimarães, which he describes as his "open-air studio." A self-taught painter, he is the son of a Chiquitano father who fled conscription during the Chaco War in Bolivia and a Bororo mother. He spent his early childhood on the banks of the Cuiabá River, immersed in the rhythms of fishing and hunting, before being placed for adoption in Goiânia at the age of nine. In 1980, he moved to Brasília with his adoptive father, who worked in art and antiques auctions, and began drawing more frequently there, using India ink and colored pencils. In 1984, he moved to Chapada dos Guimarães, where he settled.
Chiquitano's work emerges from an attentive, immersive relationship with the biomes of the Cerrado (Brazilian savanna), the Pantanal (the world's largest tropical wetland) and the Amazon. In his canvases, the forest functions as a living language: an organism that breathes, holds memory and evokes spirituality. In his often large-scale paintings, there are no human figures, animals or explicit narrative action; the forest itself and the density of its vegetation take center stage.
The landscapes are built through chromatic layering in oil paint, acrylic, carnauba wax and natural pigments, in which roots, trunks, mists and sap become signs of a territory at risk. Chiquitano's chromatic investigation is marked by intense experimentation. The artist never uses black paint. His dark tones arise from mixing red and green or from adding blue. Blue takes center stage in his palette, conveying the humidity of tropical forests.
With a career spanning more than four decades, Chiquitano received the Marcantonio Vilaça Award from Funarte (2009) and was nominated for the Prêmio PIPA (a leading Brazilian contemporary art award) in 2008.
The Dentro da Mata series, a central thread in his practice, was presented in an extensive sequence of solo exhibitions from 2010 to 2016, curated by Fabíola Henri Mesquita and Marcio Harum, at institutions including the Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto Pedro Manuel-Gismondi (2016), the Centro Cultural Germânico de Niterói (2015), the Temporada de Projetos at Paço das Artes in São Paulo (2014), the Centro Cultural da Câmara dos Deputados in Brasília (2013), and the touring Prêmio Sesc Amazônia das Artes, which traveled through Teresina, Porto Velho, Macapá, São Luís, Belém and Manaus (2011). He also held the solo exhibitions A Sapopema da Samaúma. O desaguar do Igarapé at Centro Cultural Veras (Florianópolis, 2024, curated by Josué Mattos) and Terra Rara at the Museu de Arte e Cultura Popular da UFMT (Cuiabá) and the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Campo Grande (2016).
He has participated in group exhibitions including Text Me When You Get Home at Orma Galleria (Milan, 2026); Lírica, Crítica e Solar - artes visuais em Mato Grosso at the Museu Nacional da República (Brasília, 2025); 1ª Bienal das Amazônias in Belém (2023), later presented at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (Colombia, 2025), curated by Keyna Eleison and Vânia Leal; Dividir multiplica at The55 Project / Untitled Art Fair (Miami, 2023); La Déesse Verte at Eldorado/Lille3000 (Lille, France, 2019, curated by Dorothée Dupuis); Campos Gerais at Instituto Adelina (São Paulo, 2018, curated by Josué Mattos); the 20º Festival de Arte Contemporânea Sesc_Videobrasil at Sesc Pompéia (São Paulo, 2017); and the 11º Abre Alas at Galeria A Gentil Carioca (Rio de Janeiro, 2015). His works are held in institutional collections including MARCO (Mato Grosso do Sul), as well as in important private collections.