Carvalho was educated in France from 1911 to 1914, and then in Newcastle upon Tyne until 1922, attending the King Edward the Seventh School of Fine Arts and Durham University's Armstrong College.
Architectural historian Lauro Cavalcanti writes that, Carvalho's "freedom and lack of commitment to rigid dogmas led him to create a personal language that mixed styles, references and construction techniques.
[11] The class and racial mixing of the audiences at CAM events brought the venue to the attention of Brazil's morals police, who placed the Club under surveillance to root out leftists.
[12] In 1933, Carvalho wrote the provocative play Dance of the Dead God to be performed at the modernist Teatro da Experiência (Experimental Theater) at CAM, with spatial design by Carvalho and fellow CAM artists including Tarsila do Amaral and Lívio de Abramo, but the play was shuttered by the morals police after three showings due to the São Paulo government's desire to "limit spaces where cross-class and cross-race political alliances might develop, since the Bailado foregrounded Afro-Brazilian and mixed-race performers within an avowedly vanguard space that catered to mixed-class crowds.
Carvalho could regularly be seen in female clothing, ostensibly as part of a performance art piece he dubbed the "New Look" in 1956, in response to Christian Dior's 1947 New Look, calling it "summer fashion for a new man of the tropics".