Edgar Martins
Martins was born in 1977 in Évora, Portugal, grew up in Macao and moved to the UK in 1996. He studied photography at The University of the Arts, London; and Royal College of Art. His first book, Black Holes and Other Inconsistencies, was awarded the Thames & Hudson and RCA Society Book Art Prize; a selection of images from this book won him The Jerwood Photography Award in 2003.His work centres on a man-made, technological world and its influence on society and nature. He has been exhibited widely and his series The Diminishing Present was seen at The Empty Quarter, Dubai, in 2009. He is represented in several high-profile collections and is the recipient of many awards He was also selected to represent Macao, China, at the 54th Venice Biennale, 2011.
His first retrospective was held at Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian in Paris, 2010. His project The Poetic Impossibility to Manage the Infinite, developed in partnership with European Space Agency (ESA), was launched at Centro de Arte Moderna/Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, 2014. He lives and works in the UK.
Gérard Castello-Lopes
Born in Vichy, France in 1925, Gérard is the son of a Portuguese father and a French mother. A famous sportsman in his youth, Castello-Lopes became a businessman in the film industry and is self-taught in photography.He has a degree in Economics and Financial Sciences from the Technical University of Lisbon. From 1956 onwards he concentrated on photography and is now seen as the leading figure of the golden age of Portuguese photography of the 1950s. A follower of Henri Cartier-Bresson, he focused his camera on children and the elderly. In the late 1960s he gave up photography, only to resume it in 1982 when he had his first solo exhibition at the Ether Gallery, Lisbon. His main concerns as a photographer were the 'paradox of appearances', the nature and properties of space and the importance of scale.
He was a founding member of Hot Clube (Jazz) of Portugal and of the Portuguese Centre of Cinema. As a lecturer and essayist he collaborated with many institutions in Portugal and abroad. Several of his photos were used to illustrate book covers across Europe from 1996-2008.
Helena Almeida
Born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1934, Helena Almeida’s father, Leopoldo de Almeida, was a renowned sculptor. She studied painting at the School of Fine Arts, Lisbon, and obtained a grant to work in Paris, where she came across Lucio Fontana's slashed paintings (the mystery of what is beyond the canvas) in 1964. Almeida had her first solo show of tridimensional paintings at Buchholz Gallery, Lisbon, 1967. Photography became a central element to her work in the 1970s. She began using her own body (self-representation) to explore space in 1969. Photography, painting, drawing and performance come together in her work. Her husband, architect Artur Rosa, is often a collaborator. She represented Portugal at the São Paulo (1979), Venice (1982, 2005) and Sydney (2004) Biennales. She had a retrospective at Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Oporto, 2015, which travels to Paris and Brussels, 2016. Almeida lives and works in Lisbon.Jose Luis Neto
Born in Sátão, Portugal in 1966, Jose Luis Neto studied photography and its conservation at Ar.Co (Centre for Art and Visual Communication), Lisbon, and did a project at the Royal College of Art, London. He obtained an MA in Photographic Studies at IADE/Creative University in Lisbon, 2015. He had his first solo exhibition at Gymnásio Gallery, Lisbon, 1993 and was selected as part of the Portuguese representation at the 8th Biennale of Young European and Mediterranean Artists, Torino, Italy, 1997.His on-going interests include the language, character and limits of photography, as well as the investigation of the photographic matrix and the various processes and devices of capturing light.
His work has been shown regularly at international art fairs and at exhibitions in Brazil, Spain, France, Italy, Slovakia, Finland, Germany and Switzerland.
His work is included in many private and public collections, namely: Centro Português de Fotografia and Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Oporto; Berardo Collection, BESart, CAMJAP – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian; Fundació Foto Colectania, Barcelona; Folkwang Museum, Essen; amongst others. Neto lives and works in Lisbon.
Joshua Benoliel
Born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1873, Joshua Benoliel became a member of Ginásio Clube Português in 1892. He co-founded the newspaper O Sport in 1894 and, as an amateur photographer, saw his first pictures published and participated in his first group exhibition alongside King Charles I, 1898.He covered the state visits to Portugal of King Edward VII (Great Britain) and Alfonso XIII (Spain), 1903. The following year he left his job as customs broker to become a professional photographer. Appointed corresponding photographer in Portugal for Spanish daily ABC and French weekly L'Illustration, 1904, he became principal photographer for O Século and Ilustração Portuguesa. Two years later, he published the only pictures of the Republican Revolution, which would be distributed worldwide.
Benoliel was awarded Gold Medals at the National Exhibition of Graphic Arts, Lisbon, 1912 and Leipzig Exhibition of Graphic Arts, 1914. He accompanied President Bernardino Machado on a visit to Portuguese troops in Flanders during World War I, 1918 and was declared ‘king of the photographers and photographer of kings’ by journalist and political activist Rocha Martins. He covered important events in Holland, 1926, and Spain, including the International Exhibitions in Seville and Barcelona, 1929.
He was awarded the Portuguese Order of Santiago de Espada, 1929 and the Spanish Order of Civil Merit (1930). Last pictures for ABC, 1932. Benoliel died in Lisbon in 1932.
Maria Lamas
Born in Torres Novas, Portugal, 1893, Maria Lamas studied for two years at a catholic school in Torres Novas, 1906-08. She married and moved to Angola with her military husband in 1911. After a divorce, she moved to Lisbon in 1919 and married journalist Alfredo Lamas in 1921. Lamas published a poetry book and first novel in 1923. She was appointed director of women's weekly Modas e Bordados, 1930-47, and published several children's books and novels in the 1930s. She was elected president of the National Council of Portuguese Women, 1946. Taught by a son-in-law who worked for Kodak, she took up photography the following year after deciding to travel all over the country to investigate the living and working conditions of Portuguese women.She lived in Madeira for two years, 1955-57, and later she was arrested several times for her political ideas. She went into exile in Paris in 1962, returning to Portugal seven years later. Lamas became the director of a new women's magazine, Mulheres (Women) in 1978. She was awarded the Order of Freedom by the President of Portugal, 1980. Lamas died in Lisbon in 1983.
2011 A de Animal
05/15/2016
Nuno Viegas na Colecção Cachola
Certamente a lista de artistas da Colecção António Cachola está ainda "in progress", mas parece-me chocante notar-se já a falta de um pintor que o próprio colecionador quis associar especialmente à inauguração do seu Museu em Elvas: o Nuno Viegas, que pintou três grandes telas à escala dos corredores do antigo hospital, com destino à instalação inaugural: essas grandes pinturas sobre tela, que se referem ao lugar do museu enquanto hospital e à específica função deste, bem como uma série associada de trabalhos sobre papel, foram realizadas num atelier em Benfica, alugado durante um ano - e aí as pude ver logo que concluídas. Mas as obras não foram apresentadas na inauguração, de que encarregou João Pinharanda, e só algumas outras obras foram mais tarde expostos (2012).
Acho o Nuno Viegas um dos artistas mais importantes entre os surgiram ou se afirmaram nas primeiras décadas do novo século, mas o "gosto oficial", o mecanismo das exclusões institucionais, com a sua lógica clientelar, tem coartado a visibilidade da sua obra. Aposto que é uma das grandes apostas originais da colecção - que na maior parte dos nomes segue a rotina dos artistas do sistema galerístico-oficial. N.V. teve uma única mostra institucional em 2004, “A tinta envenenada”, no Centro Cultural de Cascais, e expõe regularmente, desde 2002, na galeria Arte Periférica. Não é fácil resistir ao muro de isolamento que é habitualmente levantado à volta dos artistas que se destacam da mediania que o sistema favorece, mediania formada por pequenas promessas surgidas à volta de três ou quatro nomes oficiais, envolvidos num sistema protector que eles próprios controlam, sob a tutela das "galerias líder". Acontece que a protecção dada às emergências fugazes e à mediocridade ambiente - tal como a insignificância de uma crítica oportunista - está a tornar o meio das artes visuais num terreno sem credibilidade, minado pelas suspeitas e só sustentado por tutores institucionais, de que se afastam espectadores e compradores. Os leilões, onde o segundo mercado estabelece os valores do reconhecimento das carreiras, estão a confirmar o descrédito do sistema oficial.
Duas pinturas de grande formato do Nuno Viegas mostradas na exposição "Génesis" do Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas (na foto instaladas no Museu): "A colisão improvável", 270 x 360cm, 2008, e "A nuvem que nos separa", 270 x 360cm, 2008.
Têm o defeito de serem a cores e não do preto e branco, conforme o regime vigente, e de não serem "minimalistas" - pelo contrário, são maximalistas, podem ser observadas como comentários do presente (em vez de serem apenas um exercício formal, ou uma obra de arte sobre a ideia de arte), são comunicativas e despertam emoções, são livres de tutelas escolares ou críticas, são formal e materialmente poderosas na sua realização pictural, são abertamente imaginativas quanto à sua temática figurativa e narrativa.
Da colecção António Cachola fazem parte as três telas adquiridas pelo coleccionador na perspectiva da inauguração do seu museu, a que acima me refiro, mais 14 desenhos dentro da mesma temática, bem como outras duas telas de grande formato adquiridas mais tarde e que integraram a exposição "Génesis" do MACE em 2012. Defendo que são obras mais poderosas e radicais do que a generalidade das peças da colecção. Suspeito que é por isso que se exerce alguma censura - ou será distração?