José de Guimarães was born in Guimarães in 1939, and since 1995 has been dividing his life between Lisbon and Paris. A stay in Angola during the 1960s and 1970s was to become a determining vector in defining his artistic vocabulary, and the contact with specialists in African ethnology led him to the understanding of a symbology existent in many African art objects and suggested an artistic project driven by an effort to create an osmosis between two forms of visual expression, European and African. Yet, if the fir Read more...st decade of artistic production was based in Africa, his more than forty years of work displays complete series focused on the Chinese and Japanese cultures, on the art of Rubens, the literature of Camões and the unique conception of death in Mexico. In the last few years, his path has reflected a tendentiously cosmopolitan vocation of forms and figures. His visual expression has thus been highlighting the coexistence of all the dominant factors in a long artistic career and has privileged the light of neons and LEDs, especially in his wooden boxes, which propose an exterior of austerity in contrast with the scenographic setting of their interior space, fitted out with the luminous strokes of neons and LEDs, painting, collages and objects deflected from the meaning conferred by their traditional function. Having held a vast number of exhibitions in several countries and, apart from earlier anthological exhibitions held at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels (1984), at the Museo de Arte Moderno (Mexico City, 1987), at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, and at the Fundação de Serralves in Porto (1992), he has been the subject of several anthological or retrospective exhibitions in Portugal (Cordoaria Nacional, Lisbon, 2001, and Fundação Carmona e Costa, Lisbon, 2012), in Germany (Museum Würth, Künzelsau, 2001), in Japan (Hillside Forum, Tokyo, 2002), in Switzerland (Art Forum Würth, Arlesheim and Chur, 2003), in Brazil (Fundação Cultural FIESP, 2005, and Museu Afro Brasil, Sao Paulo, 2006), Spain (Fundación Caixanova, 2003, and Museo Würth La Rioja, 2008), in Angola (Centro Cultural Português, Luanda, 2009), in Italy (Art Forum Würth, Rome, 2010), in Brussels (Espace Européen pour la Sculpture, 2007 e European Parliament, 2012) and in China (Museu Yan Huang, Beijing, 1994, Today Art Museum, Beijing, 2007, Suzhou Jinji Lake Art Museum, Suzhou, 2012 and Art Museum of Shaanxi Province in Xi’an, 2013). In 2012 he was elected President of the National Society of Fine Arts of Lisbon. On International Arts Centre José de Guimarães in Guimarães, participated in the exhibitions: "Beyond History" (2012), "Lessons of Darkness" (2013) and "Contact Sheets" (2014), “Painting: Monumental Suites And Variations” (2015). In 2016 ho opens the exhibition “Conjurations in the Millennium bcp collection and in other works by José de Guimarães” at the Millennium Gallery in Lisbon and participated in the exhibition “Portugal Portugueses – Arte Contemporânea” at the Afro-Brazilian Museum in São Paulo. In 2017 he is part of the exhibition ”Portugal em Flagrante I” and “Portugal em Flagrante II”, at the Centro de Arte Moderna, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, and was part of the exhibition “L’internationales Des Visionnaires” curated by Jean-Hubert Martin, in Montolieu, France. In 2018 he inaugurates in the Museu do Oriente, in Lisbon, the exhibition “A Museum from another world”. In the CIAJG, participated in the exhibitions “Odd Objects: An Essay on Photo-Sculptures” and “Labyrinth and Echo”. And, in Le Grand Presbytère de Martres-Tolosane, France, participates in the exhibition "Coups de Coeur Coups de Gueule" from the Cérès Franco collection. His work, represented in the most relevant institutional collections in Portugal and a little all over the world, with special incidence in Japan and Germany, proposes crossovers with the art of non —Western civilizations — African, Chinese and Mesoamerican; a never-ending search for non-verbal relationships, which is also reflected in his practice as a collector, on which he has been focusing for several decades.

Skills: silkscreen serigraphy