Biography

Celeste Maia, born in Mozambique, lives in Madrid. After studies in Mozambique, South Africa, France and the United States, she painted and showed in the various countries where she lived – United States, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Portugal, Spain and Italy, among others.

She had two itinerant exhibits in Asia – India, Thailand, China, Korea and Japan. In 2000 Maia published an art book about her life as a painter, As Festas Secretas.

From 2006 to 2008 she published, writing and illustrating, three bilingual children's books in Portuguese and English – The Painting That Doesn't Want To End, The Dog Who Plays Chess, and Nicolas and Nyoka. Her first book was recommended by the National Reading Program of Portugal, Read More.

In 2009 an abstract phase emerged in her painting, coinciding with a new interest in working with watercolors.

In 2010 Maia became a Fellow at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, spending six weeks at the Foundation's XV century castle in Umbria. While there, she produced a series of watercolor abstracts, had the privilege of meeting remarkable Fellows from all over the world, and visited Piero della Francesca's enduring and stunning frescoes.

Upon her return to Spain in November 2010, Maia was commissioned by the Spanish company Colomer & Sons to paint 20 one-of-a-kind original watches. She responded to this challenge by researching and submitting to a jury more than 200 ideas on paper before deciding on Time as the theme. But what is Time? Read more in The Beat of Time section.

Maia loves to travel, to discover new countries, to lose herself in new cultures, new cuisines, new sounds. Above all, she likes in these travels to observe the people and to photograph them in their usual routines. Her head continues to be in Mozambique where her dreams take place.