The painter and teacherEurico Gonçalves, a pioneer in artistic education in Portugal, died in the early hours of Sunday, aged 90, his family said. One of the names of Portuguese surrealism, a pioneer in artistic education in Portugal, author of a personal aesthetic called Dadá-Zen, he had more than 70 years of career.
Eurico Gonçalveswas born in 1932 in Abragão (Penafiel). Recognized specialist in the knowledge of children's plastic expression, he gave the name to Escola BásicaEurico Gonçalves, in Lumiar, in Lisbon. He received a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Paris and received the Almada Negreiros Prize in 1998. In 2005, he was awarded the Grand Prix of the XIII International Biennial of Arts in Vila Nova de Cerveira, an event in which he had participated in all editions until then and whose recognition considered, with humor and pragmatism, “late” but “special”. He was then 73 years old and fluent in the aesthetic expression that he had made his — “Dada-Zen was the designation created by Eurico to relate Dada vitalism and the Zen philosophical attitude. Both propose an unconcerned and spontaneous art, open to the intervention of chance and the revelation of the immediate data of the unconscious”, writes Dalila d'Alte Rodrigues in her doctoral thesis A obra deEurico Gonçalvesfrom the perspective of Portuguese and international surrealism. The grand prize at Cerveira was a sort of corollary of his various distinctions: between 1966 and 67 he was a fellow of the Gulbenkian Foundation in Paris, where he worked with the French painter Jean Degottex and attended the University of Sorbonne, where his masters were Jean Francastel and René Huyghe, can be read in his CV sent to the newsrooms. In 1998 he received the Almada Negreiros Painting Prize.
As a visual artist, he had dozens of solo exhibitions, including those held at Galeria Presença, in Porto (1996), or the anthology Quero Vivo e Emprego Sol, 1949-2006 (2007) or Dada-Zen/Pintura-Escrita ( 2010), as well asEurico Gonçalves, Gesture, Informal and/or Calligraphic Painting Inspired by Zen (2018). Among the collective exhibitions, he curated O Erotismo na Arte Moderna Portuguesa at the invitation ofCruzeiro Seixas, was part of the Portuguese representation at the XVII Bienal Internacional de S. Paulo (1983) or the First Exhibition of Surrealism or Not, curated byMário CesarinyandCruzeiro Seixas. In 1972, he prefaced the important exhibition by Henri Michaux, at Galeria S. Mamede in Lisbon.
In addition to having done art criticism for several Portuguese newspapers and magazines, he also signed the books A Pintura das Crianças e Nós – Pais, Professors e Educadores (Porto Editora, 1976), A Arte Descobre a Criança (Raiz Editora, 1991), A Criança Discovers Art (Raiz Editora, 1991/93), Narratives of Dreams, Poems and Automatic Texts 1950/51 (Edições Prates, 1995), Dádá-Zen/Pintura-Escrita (Edições Quasi, 2005), and participated with O Eroticism in Portuguese Modern Art in the work Sexology in Portugal (Texto Editora, 1987).
He was a specialist in the knowledge of children's plastic expression, describes Dalila Rodrigues, who recalls that the artist named Escola BásicaEurico Gonçalves, in Lisbon.Eurico GonçalvesHe became known for being a painter, teacher, art critic and pioneer in the field of artistic education in Portugal. His work is represented in the collections of some of the most important Portuguese art institutions — at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation's Center for Modern Art, at the Amadeo de Souza Cardoso Museum, at Culturgest, at the Chiado Museum, at the Surrealism Studies Center - Fundação Cupertino de Miranda, among other institutions.