Manuel Messias was born in Sergipe in 1945, spent some years in Bahia, and migrated with part of his family to Rio de Janeiro. In the 1960s, he took classes with Ivan Serpa at MAM-Rio and from there began to develop his artistic career, focusing primarily on printmaking. His production, from the beginning, showed a strong expressionist character. In the early years, the influences of German expressionists, cordel literature, comics, and important figures in Brazilian printmaking such as Goeldi and Grassmann are clear.

Messias’ time as an assistant and finishing artist at an advertising agency, still in the 1960s, was also fundamental in creating a language of high synthetic and communicative power, which marks a large part of his production. With over 30 years of active participation in the Brazilian cultural scene, Messias was a critical success, won several awards, and participated in important national and international exhibitions. He maintained a constant, conscious, and cohesive production, with an elaborate aesthetic sense and deep artistic knowledge.