Antônio Henrique Amaral

[1] He is best known for his images' artistic and political critiques in the form of a series of paintings of bananas that have been mutilated by forks and ropes.

Amaral's first solo exhibition came in 1958 when he showed a group of engravings at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art.

[4] In 1959 Amaral enrolled in the Pratt Graphic Institute in New York City where he learned wood engraving from Shiko Munakata and W.

In 1967, Amaral opened an exhibition of woodcuts entitled “O meu e o seu” (“Mine and Yours”), after which he switched to painting as his primary medium.

[7] In 1964, General Humberto De Alencar Castelo Branco led a coup that replaced the existing government with a military junta.

5, which closed Congress, dissolved the veneer of democracy that existed at the time, allowed the regime to arrest, imprison without habeas corpus, and to censor, outlaw criticism, and repress the populace harshly.

Without recourse to dialogue or democracy, a small portion of the opposition took to guerrilla resistance such as high-profile kidnappings in order to demand their comrades be freed from the dictatorship's torture chambers, and bank robberies.

[8] Among other things, Amaral's banana paintings reflected the human rights abuses of the regime and its support by the United States.

The Campos de batalha series began around 1973, after Amaral moved back to New York City to avoid the intense censorship and possible retaliation by the Brazilian government.

In this series, Amaral introduces sharp, metallic objects like forks and knives that penetrate and cut the bananas.

He also changed the Brazilian motto on the flag to highlight the word Esso, which was a large U.S. oil company (now Exxon Mobil) operating in Brazil.

The verticals and diagonals he uses, especially in Alone in Green (1973) and Battlefield #31 (1974), bring stress and energy to his paintings, trying to evoke the feeling that what is going on in Brazil is wrong.