Who is the Portuguese urban artist Mr.Dheo?
Mr.Dheo he is the author of several urban art murals spread across the country and in various corners of 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 what surrounds him. At the age of three, he began copying sentences from newspapers and magazines and drawing 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 countless letter studies. 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 account: “I discovered graffiti when I was 15. 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 would "force" me to face this hobby in a more solid and more 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 stayed that way for a while, as I integrated myself more and more into the medium and met other artists, I evolved and increased my addiction.”
In the same interview he also mentioned that there is no special reason for the name: “Dheo emerged in 2001 when I tried to create a pseudonym composed of 4 letters with which I could identify myself and which were good in terms of calligraphy, which is the basis of graffiti. The "Mr." it came up a few years later through a friend's joke and ended up staying, perhaps to make the name even less common in the world of graffiti and, as far as possible, easier to memorize.
Mr.Dheo's Murals: Visual Manifestos
In recent times, he has raised awareness of the situation of homeless people and the problem of ocean pollution, paid tribute to health professionals and 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 noble area of the city of Porto. This striking mural has the caption 'So many people without a home, so many houses without people.' where you can see an image of a homeless person lying on a garden bench, with their belongings on the ground and a dog under the bench. "Freedom fighter" ("fighter for freedom") is his most recent work in Matosinhos, which portrays the war in Ukraine. On a wall on 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 shortage of fantastic works by Mr.Dheo for us to appreciate. However, his works do not stop here and cross borders reaching 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 bare minimum 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 be in order to be at the level of what is done abroad. Here, producing a good production every two months, especially if it is praised, is enough to be at its peak, but in that space of time, 30 are produced 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 already made interventions in more than fifty cities all over the world. Collaborates with well-known brands and international companies despite choosing the street as the perfect place to create. Versatile, it is mainly dedicated to photorealistic productions which, combined with graphic components, give it its own style in constant growth and development.
