Ana Maria Pacheco is a Brazilian artist, living in the UK, who works in paint, printing and wooden sculpture. Born 1943, she bore witness to the coup by the military junta in her home country in 1964, and much of her art is influenced by Brazil’s turbulent past. Initially trained in sculpture and music in Goiás and Rio de Janeiro, she moved to study at the Slade in 1973.

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Pacheco’s parents were both Catholic and Protestant, and Brazil’s religious folklore features heavily in much of her work. Other inspirations include Brazilian modernist literature and the local custom of Cordel literature – inexpensively produced pamphlets of songs and poetry. She has also taught in her career, lecturing in both Goiás and as Head of Fine Art at the Norwich School of Art.

In 1993 Pacheco worked with Stanley Jones at the Curwen Studio to produce illustrations as lithographs for the story Don Quixote. Pacheco was selected by the Henry Moore Foundation to spend time in the studio on experimental lithographic work.

In this series of six lithographs a journey of union and separation is enacted, one which moves from imagination (1), through desire (2) and courtship by the mock-heroic suitor on a child’s hobbyhorse (3), into the light of requited love (4); the lover transformed in the beloved. However, the darkness of jealousy and possession emerges as Don Quijote rejects and glowers at his faithful squire, Sancho Panza (5). In the final image he is isolated again (6), sitting in the gloom, hugging his loneliness.