Brazilian writer and poet and painter and sculptor born in São Paulo, capital, with outstanding performance in the modernist movement, author of the poem Juca Mulato (1917), a work of international repercussion and which had dozens of edits. Son of Italians Luís Del Picchia and Corina Del Corso Del Picchia, as a boy he moved to Itapira, a city in the interior of São Paulo, where he attended primary school. His secondary studies were done in Campinas, São Paulo, and in Pouso Alegre, Minas Gerais, where he earned a degree in Science and Letters. At the age of 13 he started to produce his first literary productions and at the age of 16, he founded and directed O Mandu, a small newspaper in the local gymnasium to publicize his literary productions.
He graduated from the Faculty of Law of São Paulo (1913), the year he published his debut book, Poemas do vice e da Virtue (1913) and returned to Itapira where he was a farmer, practiced law, directed the newspaper Cidade de Itapira and founded the political newspaper O Shout. There he wrote the poems Moisés and Juca Mulato, both published in the same year, and returned to São Paulo.
Author of novels, short stories and chronicles, novels and essays, plays, political studies and children's literature. Founder, editor and contributor to several São Paulo newspapers, his chronicles published (1920-1930) in Correio Paulistano, constituted a kind of diary of modernism. With Graça Aranha, Oswald de Andrade, Mário de Andrade and others, he led the Modernist Movement Brazilian and was one of the promoters of the Week of Modern Art, held at the Municipal Theater of São Paul (1922).
He founded newspapers and magazines, was a farmer, attorney general of the State of São Paulo, editor, bank and industrial director, notary and held several high administrative positions. He did painting and sculpture and was twice a state deputy and three times a federal deputy for São Paulo. He belongs to the Paulista and Brazilian Academies of Letters, to which he was elected (1943) to occupy Chair n. 28, in succession to Xavier Marques.
The poet died in the city of São Paulo, aged 96, and in Itapira the name “Juca Mulato” was given to a park and the poet's name to a square, in addition to the construction of the memorial Casa de Menotti Del Picchia. Examples of his work were also the poems Poems of Vice and Virtue (1913), The Love of Dulcinea (1926) and Stone Rain (1925), the novels Flame and Clay (1920), The Crime of That Night (1924) and Salome (1940) and the novels and short stories The Bread of Moloch (1921), The Woman Who Sinned (1922) and The Nose of Cleopatra (1922).
He also wrote essays such as The Crisis of Democracy; The Brazilian Crisis: National Solutions (1935) and The São Paulo Revolution (1932) and for theater as the Supreme Conquest (1921).
Figure copied from the pages of the MEMORY CENTER / ABL:
http://www.academia.org.br
Source: http://www.dec.ufcg.edu.br/biografias/
Order P - Biography - Brazil School
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biografia/paulo-menotti.htm
