The New York Times Writes that AS Exhibition "Provides Immersion in Bispo's Greatness"

Arthur Bispo do Rosario, a former Marine Corps signalman, boxer, tram cleaner, and domestic worker in Rio de Janeiro, had no interest in defining his extensive activities as art. His unusual embroidered garments and textiles, ingenious assemblages, and use of language had a higher purpose: Bispo was Jesus Christ, according to angels who visited him the night of Dec. 22, 1938, and instructed him to record, or possibly replicate reality. Thus, the title of his first retrospective in the United States, at the Americas Society in Manhattan: Bispo do Rosario: All Existing Materials on Earth.

His claim of being Jesus led to a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and a life spent in and occasionally out of mental institutions, primarily the notorious Colônia Juliano Moreira. (In 1954 he escaped and remained free until 1963, getting by on odd jobs while also making his artwork.) 

In 1964, he landed back at Juliano Moreira where he remained until his death in 1989 at age 80, working compulsively to prepare for Judgment Day. By 1967 he had managed to set himself up in the Moreira’s mostly empty solitary-confinement pavilion, commandeering 11 cells for studio and storage space. It was quieter, he said, and easier to hear the voices. […]

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