Raul Córdula (Painter, graphic artist, set designer, professor, and art critic

Raul Córdula Filho (Campina Grande, PB, 1943). Painter, graphic artist, set designer, professor, and art critic. He began painting in 1958. In 1959, he illustrated poems by the Geração 59, a group of poets from Paraíba that published the literary supplement A União nas Letras e nas Artes.

In the early 1960s, he traveled to Rio de Janeiro and studied art history at the Institute of Fine Arts and painting techniques at the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (MAM/RJ), where he was a student of Domenico Lazzarini (1920–1987).

Between 1963 and 1965, he was supervisor of the visual arts department at the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB). From 1965 to 1972, he worked as a set designer for several television stations. In 1967, he became director of the Assis Chateaubriand Museum of Art in Campina Grande (MAAC). In 1977, he founded the Núcleo de Arte Popular e Artesanato (NAP — Center for Folk Art and Handicrafts) at the Casa de Cultura de Pernambuco, in Recife.

Between 1978 and 1985, he was coordinator of the Contemporary Art Center at UFPB. From 1978 to 1988, he taught art history and the fundamentals of visual language in the art education and architecture and urbanism programs at UFPB’s Department of Arts. In 1994, he was hired by the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia (MAM/BA) to coordinate the establishment of the MAM-Bahia Art Salon. From 1997 to 1998, he served as director of artistic and cultural development at the Fundação Espaço Cultural da Paraíba (FUNESC).