Elis Regina
How to talk about MPB and not mention Elis Regina? Considered the greatest Brazilian singer of all time, Elis was a hurricane on stage. Born in Rio Grande do Sul, Pimentinha, as she was known, started singing at the age of eleven. At 15, she was hired by Rádio Gaúcha and, in the following year, she released her first album.
Elis' career took off quickly and soon the singer moved to São Paulo. A darling of the public and critics, Elis received a series of awards and was a guaranteed figure in television shows.
A sales success, Elis played among the most diverse genres: she went from bossa nova to jazz, sang MPB, rock and samba. She partnered with the biggest and was not intimidated when she was with Milton Nascimento, Tom Jobim and Ivan Lins.
In her personal life, Elis had two great partners: Ronaldo Bôscoli (with whom she had João Marcelo Bôscoli) and César Camargo Mariano (with whom she had Pedro Camargo Mariano and Maria Rita). The fate of this great name in music was tragic: at just 36 years old, Elis left this world a victim of her drug addiction.
Artist: Kai Kaljo (Estonia)
(Image credit: Dribbble)
Artist
Kai Kaljo is primarily known as a video artist, although her work also includes painting, photography, fresco, stained glass, and installation art. Kaljo’s themes are inspired by her personal and everyday life extending into existential and social statements. Using black humour and irony, she often questions power relations in the art world, whether they are based on gender (male artists vs female artists), choice of artistic media (traditional art vs new media), geography (Estonia and Eastern Europe vs the international Western art world) or economic status (the precarity of freelance artists).
In the 1980s, Kaljo studied monumental painting, and in the 1990s she found herself in a new society, where state art commissions had suddenly disappeared and the art field of newly independent Estonia saw the emergence of new media. Her first notable moment of recognition came in 1994 with her site specific installation “Genesis and Disappearance of Life” at the 2nd Annual Exhibition of the Soros Center of Contemporary Arts, Estonia “Unexistent Art”.