Ricardo Aleixo was born in 1960 in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Being specially recognized for his visual and social poetry, permeated with ironies, he is considered one of the most innovating Brazilian contemporary poets. His production mixes several artistic languages, revealing connections with concretism and ethno-poetry.
His first contact with art was through music when he was 11 years old. At the age of 14, he grew interested in the visual arts and in writing poetry. Officially, however, his debut in the literary world took place in 1992, with the book »Festim« (1992; tr. »Feast«). Autodidact, now he works as a poet, musician, performer, visual artist and cultural producer.
His work can be found in national and international collections with poems published in the USA, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Argentina, Portugal, Spain, among others. As a performer he also has been in many countries, such as Portugal, France and Germany. In addition to that, he has participated in collective and individual expositions.
In 2004, Aleixo won a grant from the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional (National Library Foundation) for Brazilian authors with books in phase of conclusion, in the category Essay, publishing »Palavras a olhos vendo – Escritos sobre escritas« (2011; tr.»Words to seeing eyes – Writings about writing«). In 2010 he won the Literatura para Todos award, offered by MEC (Ministry of Education), in the category poetry.
In the following year, he was a finalist in the Portugal Telecom and Jabuti awards with
»Modelos Vivos« (2010; tr. »Living Models«) published with the support of the Petrobras Cultural program. The book seems to synthetize the artist search for a process of free creation that, from the very beginning, questions the limits between artistic languages. The mix of these languages is the highlight of his work, composed of calligraphies, frames, texts, epigrams, essay-poems, pyrography and other artistic constructions.
Aleixo is the curator of the International Black Art Festival (FAN) in Belo Horizonte, a role that he played in several other projects, spectacles and expositions. His production reveals a constant pursuit for the union between words and images, exploring poetry’s visuality and “vocality”, integrating with other artistic possibilities, such as multimedia, performance and music. Among his publications there are still some titles of consideration, »Quem faz o quê?« (1999; tr. »Who did what?«), »A Aranha Ariadne« (2003; tr. »The Spider Ariadne«) and »Máquina Zero« (2004 tr. »Machine Zero«). Ricardo Aleixo lives in Belo Horizonte.