Bertina Lopes

Mozambican painter and sculptor born in Lourenço Marques (current Maputo) in Mozambique.
Daughter of Portuguese father and Mozambican mother, she finished her secondary studies in Lisbon, where she graduated in painting and sculpture by the Upper Academy of Fine Arts. During his stay in Portugal, the young woman had the opportunity to meet some Portuguese painters, like Carlos Botelho and Marcelino Vespeira. In 1953, she returned to Maputo and taught Drawing for nine years at General Machado technical school. Contact with the poetry of Nonemia de Sousa and José Craveirinha influenced the work of the artist who began to express in his cadres to social and political critique.
In 1962, she won a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation that allowed her to study ceramics in Portugal with Cherub Lapa. However, due to the dictatorial regime of the time and the colonial policy administered by António Salazar, Bertina Lopes She decided not to return to Mozambique and, in 1964, obtained another scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in order to deepen her artistic knowledge in Rome, where she was established. Then she met Italian artists, like Marino Marini and Renato Guttuso. She has been holding several exhibitions in Italy, as well as in other countries, such as Portugal, Luxembourg, Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde and Spain. As of 1993, it exercises the functions of Cultural Counselor at the Mozambique Embassy in Italy. The painter, who had begun his career in 1950, has been the target of numerous studies and analyzes about her artwork.
Bertina Lopes Received several prizes and titles from which the 1st International Painting Prize of the International Center for Mediterranean Art and Culture (1975), the Grand Prix of Honor of the European Union of Art Criticism (1988), the Carson World Prize of the Rachel Carson Foundation in New York (1991), the International Art Prize "La Piejade" (1992) in Rome and the title of Art Commander delivered by President Mario Soares (1993). Her work is represented in private and public collections above all in Mozambique, Portugal, Italy and the United States of America.