"In each of these (Magda's) paintings, there is a contained emotion that emerges from the struggle between the images revealed by the intellect and the very
personal experience of the artist's human condition, the concrete condition of being a woman, mother and daughter, of being created and creating ... this capacity of
creation and procreation are present in Magda through her capacity to know."
- Jorge Ruedas de la Serna, Ph.D.,
cultural attaché to the Mexican Embassy in Brazil, 1991.
Magda Brum Schaaf was born in Porto Alegre, the capital of Brazil's southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, which borders Uruguay, Argentina and the Atlantic
Ocean. Magda initiated her study of art at a very early age at the Children's Art School of the French Alliance in Brasilia.
In 1980-81 she studied drawing at the Vasco Prado & Zoravia Bettiol Studio in Porto Alegre.
In 1986 she moved with her husband and children to the United States, where along with raising her two children, she studied drawing and painting at the
American Academy of Art in Chicago, Maitland (FL) Art Center, and completed several semesters of painting, drawing, jewelry, and ceramics at the College of DuPage, in Glen Ellyn, IL.
Expositions
1981 - 1st solo exhibition: Honeycombs of the Earth - Legislature Building of
the State of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) - drawings in charcoal and colored
pencil.
1982 - collective: Academia Riograndense de Letras, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil -
drawings
1982 - collective: Vasco Prado Studio, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil - paintings.
1983 - collective: Ecology Art Show - Brasilia, DF, Brazil - drawings in ink.
1989 - Solo exhibition: Maria Maria - Danna Center Gallery, Loyola University,
New Orleans, LA - paintings and drawings.
1990 - Solo exhibition Apparition: Hotel National Brasilia, DF, Brazil - oil
paintings
1992 - collective: Maitland (FL) Art Center - ceramics
2000 - Solo exhibition: Borders Bookstore, Wheaton, IL - oil paintings
2002 - collective: Stolizzo Gallery, Chicago, IL
2002 (three months) - collective: Gallery 1633, Chicago, IL.