Sebastião Theodoro Paulino da Silva, better known as Ranchinho, was born into a farming family in São Paulo’s countryside. After his father’s death, he moved with his family to the city of Assis. Having never learned to read or write, Ranchinho made ends meet by collecting recyclables while living in abandoned ranches, earning him his nickname. Self-taught, he practiced gouache and acrylic painting on particleboard and developed a technique of oil painting on cardboard. Ranchinho painted scenes from the countryside of São Paulo, whose rural areas at the time were experiencing migration and urbanization. He mainly depicted scenes of a more traditional Assis, where he spent most of his life. In 1973, he exhibited his work at the 12th Bienal de São Paulo. In Estrada rural [Country Road] (undated), a diagonal road crosses the canvas, placing two moving vehicles and a cotton plantation into perspective, forming a triangular shape. A bus passes as a livestock trailer travels in the opposite direction, providing a sense of the transformations the countryside was undergoing. Ranchinho distorted the scene’s proportions with short, loose and juxtaposed strokes; the colors are vibrant. He seems to be seduced by the form and tonality of the cotton shrubs, painted in bundles of small circles that highlight their texture with luminous whites.

— Guilherme Giufrida, assistant curator, MASP, 2018

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