[1] De Melo grew up in Portugal where he lived with his grandmother, converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and where he began art.
While growing up in Portugal, de Melo enjoyed playing at the beach, in the forests, and watching American films.
[2] After his grandmother's death, de Melo's aunt and uncle moved to a small town and sent him to work in a factory.
Corpo e Alma (Body and Soul) from 2005 is a series of eighteen works that uses collage, graffiti, and abstraction to protest war and corruption in Angola.
[1] His works, raw and accusatory, address colonization, civil war, racism, slavery, fear, pain, survival, blood, and more.
[1] As a young professional artist, de Melo learned to paint in the dark because of the frequent power outages in Angola.
If I were born in New York, I would be a New Yorker.”[4] “And everything I have experienced, I’ve put on canvas.”[4] In 2013, the Museum of Natural History in Luanda exhibited eleven paintings and 10 drawings de Melo entitled "God".
[6] From February 16 to March 6, 2016, de Melo exhibited Expand at That Art Fair, sponsored by ArtAfrica magazine in Cape Town, South Africa.
[7] Also in 2016, de Melo exhibited sixteen sculptures at the Camões-Portuguese Cultural Center in Luanda from November 24 to December 15.
[11] The Mormon Arts Center produced an exhibit of de Melo's work entitled Nzambi (God), which was curated by Glen Nelson.
[13][14] Because of the difficulty in moving artwork from Angola, de Melo painted the works in the exhibit while he was visiting New York during a residency program.