Sidival Fila is a Franciscan friar, artist, and President of the philanthropic foundation that bears his name. He has lived and worked in Rome for over forty years, currently at the Convent of San Bonaventura al Palatino, where his studio is also located.
Drawing on a poetics rooted in European Informalism, Spatialism, and the ready-made, he works mainly with antique textiles — linen, hemp, silk, brocades — now disused and stripped of their original function, in order to restore to them new life and meaning. His works, the result of continuous experimentation with tensions, folds, sutures, and introflexions, offer a reflection on human perception of reality, on the memory of matter, and on the possibility of redemption — also spiritual — through art.
Born in 1962 in Arapongas, in the state of Paraná (Brazil), to a family of Italian origin, Sidival Fila grew up in a domestic environment where art and craftsmanship were integral parts of everyday life: his father was a bricklayer, his grandfather a decorator, and his mother a seamstress. From a very young age he showed an interest in the plastic arts, which led him to move to the metropolis of São Paulo, where he visited museums and galleries and began his first expressive explorations.
In 1985 he decided to emigrate to Italy, driven by the desire to deepen his understanding of European visual culture: he arrived in Rome, initially as an intermediate stop on the way to Paris, but the city’s cultural richness and the welcome he received convinced him to stay. After several years dedicated to work and personal growth, Sidival developed a religious vocation that led him to enter the Order of Friars Minor of Saint Francis of Assisi. He interrupted his artistic practice for more than 18 years, devoting himself entirely to the Franciscan ministry in convents and places of pastoral service. Only in 2006, thanks to a chance restoration experience inside the convent where he lived, did he begin a gradual and profound return to art.
Sidival Fila's work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Scuola Grande di San Marco (Venice, 2024); Mennour (Paris, 2024); the Vatican Library (Rome, 2023); Fondazione Raccolta Lercaro (Bologna, 2021); Palazzo Ducale (Sassuolo, 2018); and the Museo Carlo Bilotti at Villa Borghese (Rome, 2015), among others. He participated in the 58th Venice Biennale (2019), where he presented a site-specific installation inside the Venice Pavilion titled Golgotha. Recent group exhibitions include presentations at the Centre Pompidou-Metz (Metz, 2025); Fondazione Memmo (Rome, 2024); and Maison La Roche – Fondation Le Corbusier (Paris, 2025), among others. His works are held in private and institutional collections worldwide, including the permanent modern and contemporary art collection of the Vatican Museums and the Fondation Louis Vuitton.