Jair Correia was born in São Paulo city in 1956. He has an artistic path clearly marked by the quality of their work and seriousness of his proposals: he began to exhibit at 13 and worked in newspapers as an illustrator and art editor to enter the cinema, at the invitation of Egydio Eccio in the film "War is war" in 1976, where he was assistant director and assistant editor. His masters in photography were Miroslav Javůrek and Edward Freund who worked in other films. In 77 he wrote with Roberto Santos "Wanted a Love" script for the unreleased film and edited "Stop 88 - The Alert Limit" by José de Anchieta and also "Grief of Cowboy" by Jeremias Moreira Filho among other films. Still, in 78 he is Director of Production of "João Juca Jr., Detective Carioca" of Denoy de Oliveira and soon after he directed his first documentaries. Two of them, "The Art in the Wood of Agenor" and "The Art in the Marble" was selected among the "Best Documentaries of the 70s" for movie critics. (Sesc-CineSesc)

He had the most respected Brazilian film critic Ruben Biáfora, O Estado de São Paulo newspaper, the highest praise for his talent as a director and artist. He received the award for Best Film Director 1982 by APCA - São Paulo Association of Art Critics, with the film "Two Strange Women." He also directed the feature "Spoken Portrait of a Woman Without Pudor" (82) and "Shock" (83), which earned him the Governor of the State Award for the best editor and some other awards. This film participated in the Parallel Section of Cannes Film Festival and Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival in Catalonia, Spain. In 83, Correia wrote "The New Owner" with the Spanish writer Mario Garcia Guillén.

In contemporary art, he develops a personal work and he is present in the main art galleries of Brazil, such as the National Salon of Contemporary Art where he won the Contemporary Art Brasília Award, the São Paulo 21st International Biennial in 1991 and won the Contemporary Art Funarte Award 2012. He presided at the 17th Exhibition of Contemporary Art of Ribeirao Preto and participated as a Member of the Jury of other salons and the Cultural Action Program of the São Paulo State Government.

With Donato Sartori, who was the foremost masker in the Western world, he learned the methodology of making theatrical masks. He also participated in the International Seminar on Masks in Rio de Janeiro in 1995 and at the Seminario Laboratorio Internazionale at Centro Maschere e Strutture Gestuali in Padova in Italy in 96 and 98. He researched for a year the history of this rich object, its influence on the trajectory of humanity and its complexities to run the video documentar Journey to the World of the Mask (99). In 2003 for his work in the show Auto da Barca do Inferno directed by him, he was nominated for the Shell Brazilian Theater Award.

The last international exhibition of masks by Jair Correia was at the Centro Cultural Horácio Cervantes in the city of Colima, Mexico in 2008. In 2010 he held the exhibition "Icons Other Words" at the MARP Museum of Art in Ribeirão Preto. This work wins the Contemporary Art Funarte Award 2012 and is exhibited at the Fayga Ostrower Gallery in Brasilia. In 2011, at RibeirãoShopping in Ribeirão Preto, his mask exhibition marked the presence of more than 40 thousand visitors.

He was Professor of Scenography and Masks, and Interpretation for Cinema of the Course of Performing Arts of the Centro Universitário Barão de Mauá in Ribeirão Preto. Currently, he is director of the Casa da Arte / Fora do Serio, developing artworks with modern media and offering specific workshops to enable a true understanding of artistic creation and its use in society. Adding film and television audiences, Jair Correia's films reached more than 10 million viewers. *

In the year 2019, the artist completed 50 years of professional activities.

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