Miguel Penha Chiquitano is a self-taught Brazilian painter whose work is deeply rooted in direct experience with the landscapes and ecosystems of the Cerrado, Pantanal, and Amazon — three of South America’s most ecologically rich and threatened biomes. Born to a Xiquitano father and a Bororo mother, both Indigenous peoples of Central Brazil, he incorporates ancestral knowledge and an immersive relationship with natural cycles into his artistic practice. In his paintings, the forest becomes a living language — an organism that breathes, holds memory, and evokes spiritual presence.
Over more than four decades, Miguel has developed a visual poetics that merges technical refinement with an acute environmental awareness. His landscapes are composed of layered chromatic fields in oil, acrylic, carnauba wax, and natural pigments, where roots, trunks, mists, and saps appear as signs of a territory under ecological pressure.
Miguel has presented more than fifty exhibitions in Brazil and abroad — including shows in France, Germany, Austria, and Bolivia — and was awarded the Marcantonio Vilaça Prize in 2009, one of Brazil’s leading contemporary art awards. He lives and works in Chapada dos Guimarães, in Central Brazil’s Mato Grosso region, a vast plateau that he describes as his “open-air studio.” His works are part of institutional collections such as MARCO (Museum of Contemporary Art of Mato Grosso do Sul), as well as major private collections.