Mr.Dheo is the author of several urban art murals spread across the country and around the world – from his hometown, Vila Nova de Gaia, to Porto, Miami, São Paulo, Johannesburg or Dubai. His works reflect an attentive and critical view of his surroundings. At the age of three he began to copy phrases from newspapers and magazines and to draw by himself. As an artist, he had a self-taught education, always rejecting any kind of involvement in an art school or course. Consequently, he developed his own techniques, which allowed him to register an evolution without direct influences.
The Story of Mr.Dheo
His first contact with graffiti came at the age of fifteen and his drawings quickly became numerous studies of letters. Months later, he did his first work on the street and got to know other artists with whom he identified and who motivated him to continue. In an interview Mr.Dheo says:“I discovered graffiti when I was 15 years old. Since I was very young, I had the habit of drawing but honestly I had never been tempted to paint in oil or acrylic, or to explore other ways that "forced" me to face this hobby in a more solid and serious way. But graffiti is different from everything else, it has a magic that other areas, for me, don't have. And I think I realized that right away, I felt a great identification and desire to experiment. I did it alone and kept it that way for a while, as I became more and more integrated into the environment and got to know other artists, I evolved and my addiction increased.”
In the same interview, he also mentioned that there is no special reason for the name: “Dheo came about in 2001 when I tried to create a pseudonym composed of 4 letters that I could identify with and that were good in calligraphic terms, which is the basis of graffiti. The "Mr." it emerged a few years later as a joke between friends and ended up staying, perhaps to make the name even less common in the graffiti world and, as far as possible, easier to remember.
Mr.Dheo's Murals: Visual Manifestos
In recent times, he has raised awareness of the plight of homeless people and the problem of ocean pollution, paid tribute to health professionals and to Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who helped thousands of people escape the Holocaust.'When the night falls' is the name of this work that can be found on one of the walls of Foz Velha, a prime area of the city of Porto. This impressive mural is captioned 'So many people without homes, so many homes without people.' where you can see an image of a homeless person lying on a garden bench, with his belongings on the ground and with a dog under the bench. "Freedom fighter" is his latest work in Matosinhos, which depicts the war in Ukraine. On a wall in Rua Roberto Ivens, you can see a figure with the colors of the Ukrainian flag and a symbol alluding to peace, surrounded by the destruction of war.
From downtown Porto to Matosinhos, but also in Gaia, there is no lack of fantastic works by Mr.Dheo for us to appreciate. However, his works do not stop here and cross borders arriving in cities such as Miami, São Paulo, Johannesburg, Dubai or even the Gaza Strip in Israel, among several other cities.
"Graffiti is a reflection of our society,in the sense that doing the least is enough."— Mr.Dheo
“There is little ambition for the quality that exists, little effort and little initiative. We have good artists but very few really try to raise the bar, in my opinion. And that's where we lose compared to other countries, that's where we stagnate and don't evolve as we should to be at the level of what is done abroad. Here, doing a good production every two months, especially if it is praised, is enough to be at its peak, but in that space of time there are 30 in Spain, Germany or France.I don't want to sound too critical because I repeat that there is quality, we have writers who are really good and who do work with a lot of value, but we lack the rest and I think that's what we have to strive for.” — Mr.Dheo
Today – after two decades of continuous work – Mr.Dheo has intervened in more than fifty cities around the world. He collaborates with well-known international brands and companies despite choosing the street as the perfect place to create. Versatile, it is mainly dedicated to photorealistic productions that, combined with graphic components, give it its own style in constant growth and development.
