Rafael Cardoso

Rafael Cardoso (born 4 June 1964) is a Brazilian art historian and writer. His published work includes numerous books and essays on the history of art and design in Brazil, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has also published four works of fiction, including Entre as Mulheres (2007) which first brought him to the attention of an international audience, particularly after its translation into German as Sechzehn Frauen (2013). His novel, O Remanescente (2016) was published simultaneously in Brazil, by Companhia das Letras, and Germany, by S. Fischer. Early life and education Rafael Cardoso Denis was born in Rio de Janeiro to a mixed cultural background. His father was a physician, born in France of Jewish German parents and immigrated to Brazil during the Second World War. His mother comes from a well-known literary family in Minas Gerais, being the niece of renowned Brazilian writer Lúcio Cardoso, author of Crônica de Casa Assassinada (1959), and Maria Helena Cardoso, also a noted writer. When Cardoso was five, his parents moved to the United States, and he was brought up mainly in Virginia. He attended college at the Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1985. He returned to Brazil shortly thereafter and obtained an MA in art history from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, going on to do a PhD in art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art, in London, from 1991 to 1995. Career