Carlito Carvalhosa lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. He works predominantly with painting and sculpture. During the 1980s, he was a member of the Casa 7, together with Rodrigo Andrade, Fábio Miguez, Nuno Ramos, and Paulo Monteiro, like them producing paintings with large dimensions, with an emphasis on the painterly gesture. At the end of the 1980s, he executed canvasses in pure wax or wax mixed with pigments. He subsequently began to execute sculptures in various materials, predominantly with an organic and malleable appearance. In 1989, he received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), remaining in Cologne, Germany until 1992. In the mid-1990s, he executed "lost wax" and porcelain sculptures, exploring the aesthetic properties of the materials. He looks to expand in different ways his fields of pictorial and sculptural research, with his plaster sculptures or his paintings in mirrors. 

He studied at the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo - FAU/USP [Faculty of the Architecture and Urban Planning of the University of São Paulo], from 1980 to 1984. In 2000, the book Carlito Carvalhosa, was published by Cosac & Naify, with texts by Rodrigo Naves, Alberto Tassinari and Lorenzo Mammì.
He participated in the 18th São Paulo Biennial (1985), the 2nd Havana Biennial (Cuba, 1986), the exhibition Bienal Brasil Século XX, at Fundação Bienal de São Paulo (1994), and in the 3rd Biennial of Visual Arts of Mercosul, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In 2011, Carvalhosa had a solo exhibition at MAC - SP, a solo exhibition at Eva Klabin Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, launched the book "Nice to meet you” published by Cosac & Naify and Charta Editorial, and had his first U.S. solo exhibition, at MoMA in New York.