Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira

Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira (born December 13, 1944), more famous under his pen name Léo is a Brazilian comics creator.

Biography
After graduating as a mechanical engineer, Oliveira left Brazil because of the then military dictatorship. He lived in Chile until the Chilean coup of 1973, then in Argentina, before returning to Brazil in 1974. He worked as an illustrator in the advertising industry in São Paulo before once more leaving Brazil, this time for France, in 1981. He had hoped to find work illustrating comics, but the Franco-Belgian comics industry was in difficulty at the time so he fell back on advertising once again, with a few comics pieces being published in L'Écho des savanes and Pilote.

In 1986, with the assistance of Jean-Claude Forest, Oliveira began contributing to the youth oriented magazines of Bayard Presse. He illustrated true stories for Okapi (magazine) magazine. He then recounted Mahatma Gandhi's life in the album Gandhi, le pèlerin de la paix, for Astrapi. In 1988, he began illustrating the stories of the comics writer Rodolphe (comics). The collaboration proved fruitful, producing eight albums in the series Trent and five of another series, Kenya.

In 1993, Oliveira finally achieved a dream when Dargaud agreed to publish his first solo (writer-artist) series: Aldébaran. This story has continued in the sequel series Bételgeuse and Antarès, the former nominated for the Prize for a Series at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2004.

Awards

 * 2004: nominated for Best International Series at the Prix Saint-Michel, Belgium
 * - nominated for the Youth Award (9-12 years) and the Series Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, France