Known by the name of the city where he was born, José de Guimarães (1939) is a figure of Portuguese art, who explored various areas from the visual arts, through geology, engineering to archeology. Travels to Africa, Asia and South America marked his career by stimulating and developing an aesthetic language. At the end of the 1970s, he built an alphabet based on the forms and symbols of African culture, introducing this into his works. In the 1980s, he began to explore the boundaries between painting and sculpture, with pieces produced with unconventional materials - fiberglass and paper specifically manufactured by the artist himself. With strong and cheerful colors, his works are characterized by the crossing of themes between animal and human, mineral and vegetable. For decades, the Portuguese artist collected African, pre-Columbian and ancient Chinese art, which is currently on display at the CIAJG - Centro Internacional de Artes José de Guimarães. Meet five artists here with works similar to José de Guimarães.
Álvaro Lapa
Active participant in the artistic contemporaneity of an important part of the second half of the 20th century in Portugal, Álvaro Lapa he asserted himself in a unique path through his drawings, studies, painting guided by an elegant figuration, in a universe full of image and word. The works with vibrant colors, dense blacks and pasty whites, and extraordinary figures that resemble the works of José de Guimarães. Álvaro Lapa born in Évora, in 1939. Degree in Philosophy from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon. His adolescence was marked by contact, in Évora, with the painter António Charrua and the writer Virgílio Ferreira, who awakened his interest in art and literature. In 1956 he settled in Lisbon. He enrolled in Law and, later, in Philosophy, a degree he completed in 1975. In 1961 he traveled to Paris, where he came into contact with painters close to surrealism and with North American artistic movements. When he returned, he began to paint, encouraged by António Areal, conceiving works with a strong abstractionist and informal vocation. He exhibits individually for the first time in 1964 and in the following year he moves to Lagos. During this period, he explored the use of “non-noble” materials and began to structure his work in narrative series, in which he integrates a restricted set of symbols and shapes, also inserting the written word as an element of plastic composition. He joined the Porto Superior School of Fine Arts as a professor of theoretical subjects in 1976 and settled in that city. In the 1980s, he became acquainted with José-Augusto França, who guided him in his doctoral thesis on Surrealism in Portugal. Parallel to plastic production, Lapa devoted himself continuously to writing, having been the author of numerous publications. ) and the EDP Grand Prix (2004). He died on February 11, 2006, in Porto.
Demit Omphroy
Demit Omphroy studied art at the University of California, Berkeley. For a few years he was a professional soccer player, but later pursued a new career in photography and cinema. Painting was always a constant passion in the different stages of his life, both in his personal and professional development. Thematically, all of her pieces focus on channeling her inner child, thus allowing her artistic expression to be heavily influenced by simplified lines and primary colors. The colors he normally uses are not altered, thus directing himself to specific tones. From the extraordinary figures to the strong use of bright colors, we can understand the artist's experiences, from moments of love or pain. As in the paintings of José de Guimarães, there is a story full of emotions that is told, through the pigments and movements.
Stuart Davis
Stuart Davis (1892-1964) is one of the preeminent figures of American modernism, with a long career that spanned from the early 20th century to the postwar period. Faced with the choice between realism and pure abstraction early in his career, Stuart Davis invented a vocabulary that tied the grammar of abstraction to the speed and simultaneity of modern America. By fusing the bold style of advertising with the conventions of European avant-garde painting, he created an art endowed with vitality and dynamic rhythms. In the process, he achieved a rare synthesis: an abstract art, but at the same time exudes the spirit of popular culture. At the same time, José de Guimarães brought real figures to a universe of its own, in which it exalted various cultures, from Portuguese, African and Asian. The strong pigments, the figuration and the abstract elements establish similar rhythms between the two artists.
Otmar Alt
Otmar Alt is a German artist known for his sculptures and colorful paintings, which depict animals and people. This choice is similar to the work of the Portuguese artist José de Guimarães which also consecutively portrays animals and people with strong pigments. Born on July 17, 1940 in Wernigerode, Germany, he studied at the Berlin University of Arts with the sculptor Karl Hartung. He later worked as a set designer, a career that shaped his development as an artist who paints three-dimensional objects. His pieces show the influences of artists such as Joan Miró It is Paul Klee, both in his interest in children's art and in his pictorial sense of humour.
Ammar Alobaidi
Ammar Alobaidi has an abstract language full of bright colors, rhythmic patterns, graphics, black and white on the other. Texture is implied with checkered areas, dots or wavy lines, while compositions are constructed with careful precision. The human figure is often suggested, but each character is joined together in harmonious continuity as one form overlaps the other in a way reminiscent of José de Guimarães, Picasso or Matisse.
The visual bonds between men and women are a visual allegory for the reunification of society. Faced with a world disfigured by wars and by what the artist calls “horrors” that lead human beings to their lowest instincts of individual and collective destruction, Alobaidi reveals the strength of love, solidarity and the exchanges of generosity that can take place spontaneously.
