5 artistic techniques in the works of José de Guimarães

“José de Guimarães narrates the myths of our western culture as a child. Namely Portuguese culture, although it deviates from its epic or tragic use. Stories that are proposed to us, converted into codes full of humor that invite us to think about the games of the world. so think José de Guimarães or your paintings. From what is forever inaccessible or dispersed, it keeps a sense of stories whose fragments remain in our memory.” — Eduardo Lourenço, philosopher
Through the fine arts,José de Guimarães creates a synthesis between African and European cultures with the creation of an ideographic “alphabet”, inspired by African shapes and symbols. This was the starting point for the development of a universe and a language, which it has been refining over time. The application of the work José de Guimarães goes from one relógio to a giant sculpture for a roundabout, from glasses to the metro station. Discover here the various means of creating José de Guimarães.

Design
Drawing is a structural movement in all the work ofJosé de Guimarães. It mirrors an intense daily activity of transforming reality and is expressed in multiple techniques. From calligraphy to child-like lines, on cardboard or paper, using different techniques and materials, drawing has a regenerating function in his work.

Engraving
Along your route,José de Guimarães always goes beyond the conventional in the use of engraving techniques: “Most of my engravings are engravings of very small runs, many times they are proofs, I would almost say unique, because my editions, are editions made by me, are editions experimental. "Since the beginning,José de Guimarães he was autonomous in terms of printing media, starting with the acquisition of an old iron, with which he printed his first woodcut, the roller press acquired at GRAVURA, which he always accompanied and still uses today, and the setting up of a studio serigraphy, when in 1977 he won a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for two years, to study photography and serigraphy. Examples of this are the aluminum engravings he made in Angola, due to the scarcity of conventional materials, zinc and copper. Aware of the unsuitability of aluminum as it is very soft and therefore difficult to control its bite in the acid vat, instead of giving up, the artist insisted on using it, creating several engravings in this material, aware of the unique expressive potential that this particularity of aluminum. In the creative process ofJosé de Guimarães engraving is a structural component in experimentation. It thus constitutes a driving force in his evolution as an artist, leading him to an evolutionary process throughout his work. He bet on the variation of possibilities in terms of printing, making unorthodox print runs in which, from the same matrix, he experimented with various types of inks and a chromatic variety. In this way, he obtained unique works and a wider range of formal solutions from the matrices, as opposed to the repetition of identical images obtained in the conventional print run. Engraving is used by the artist as an autonomous form of artistic expression, and never in a subsidiary way in relation to other forms of plastic expression.

Painting
Paintings, like other media, are loaded with symbology. He began to exhibit in the midst of war, in the midst of operations, the works were codified, as that was the only possible language at the time. For the rest, he did much of this work while still in an almost intuitive phase "I intuited things, I foresaw things, but I still didn't understand very well". ForJosé de Guimarães, the colors he uses are colors that come from the beginning of his work; possibly from Africa from the extremely colorful popular festivals of northern Portugal, where he was born. He especially remembers the processions and pilgrimages where there were huge floors filled with small mirrors of light. Indeed, the colors of the celebration are usually bright colors. The processions, the flags, the banners: there is an outpouring of color to celebrate important things. Deep down there is an exuberance, an overflow. In a way, the colors help a certain celebration. According to Nuno Faria: “In the context of the heterogeneous work ofJosé de Guimarães, painting emerges as the main continent, the territory from which everything departs and where everything arrives. It is an immense production, plural in formats and media, marked by the various incursions that the artist has made in the most distant regions of the world. A porous production, open to experimentation, in which one can clearly discern the different achievements, influences, maturation processes, formal reinvention, the proliferation of materials, the construction of an imaginary populated by bestiaries and marked by the succession of different ideographic alphabets.”

Sculpture
The two-dimensional sculptures ofJosé de Guimarães they are mostly forms, fitted to each other, being able to self-sustain in space. In reality, his pieces look like fitted sheets of paper, even the large sculptures, built in cement and reinforced concrete, are still two-dimensional art. Even the sculptures by José Guimarães, on more conventional supports, ensure the basic principle of three-dimensionality and convey the artist's entire universe and daring. These are sculptural works consisting of painting on a support of cut cardboard and supported by a base, and can therefore be considered hybrid works between painting and sculpture. The artist himself stated: “What I do does not fit into strict designations.” Until today,José de Guimarães he doesn't know if he makes sculptures. The art historian José-Augusto França calls them picto–sculptures, because one of their characteristics is that they are slender, as if they lacked the third dimension.

Urban art
It was in the metro that he began to draw attention to his public works. actually forJosé de Guimarães: it is important that public art be a humanist art, an art in which people feel involved and cannot be a repulsive art, which often happens. In public art, it has demonstrated its personality, without losing its mark! “Public artwork is complicated. It implies dealing with institutions and depends on political decisions, official budgets, they are slow things", declaresJosé de Guimarães, detailing: "The sculpture at Parque das Nações took, for example, seven years, and the Carnide station five. When the pieces are designed and then inaugurated, the artistic language evolves. Despite the limitations imposed, the artist is satisfied. Likes of making structures and public art and says that people respect this art: "The metro stations in Lisbon have almost no 'graffiti'. After Carnide he began to add neon to his public works. This element, with the vibrant and sensual lines of his lighting project and the fairy-like appeal of mass culture, is integrated into the artist's vocabulary, highlighting his colors and shapes, and is widely used in public art.