Marlene Dietrich (2010) Painting by Claus Costa

Was born on June 20th, 1971, in Nilópolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

He moved to the state of Paraná, in the south part of the country, when he was 5 years old to live in his grandfather’s farm. Later on he moved to the city of Maringá, in the same state, where he kept on living with his grandparents. By this time, influenced by his aunt who was a sculptor and a drawer, he started to develop a taste for arts.

In 1990, when he was 18 years old, he served the army police in Brasília, where remained for 2 years and learned, among many things, the value of friendship.

After leaving the army he fixed residence in Rio de Janeiro.

Claus worked at different kind of places to finally find a place in a drawing studio. That’s when he studied various drawing and painting techniques such as pen-and-ink drawing, water color, as well as drawing to scale and human anatomy.

From drawing to painting was a quick jump. In 1992 he started to work with fine arts in a friend’s studio. Most of what he knows about painting he learned only by observing other artists working. From that time on he started to develop his own pictorial style until coming to the pop art which he executes nowadays.

Claus Costa’s mixed media techniques give his artwork a distinguishing mark of exclusivity; there’s no way of doing a piece exactly like another. Some of these techniques are oil, acrylic, crayon, textures and pasting.

His art is based on icons that took part in the life of many generations. His gestual expresses the contemporary world’s dynamism in which contrasting ideas and facts of the past are permanently present.

Some of his favorite artists are: Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Picasso, Monet, Andy Warhol, Di Cavalcanti and Portinari.

In the present days he exhibits in galleries over Europe, mainly in Holland, Germany, and Belgium.

• Nationality: BRAZIL
• Date of birth : 1971
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Brazilian Artists