Pedro Calapez

The Portuguese artist Pedro Calapez was born on February 24, 1953, in Lisbon. He studied Engineering at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, simultaneously working as a professional photographer. Given his academic background, no one could have predicted his turn to painting. Between 1972 and 1975 he attended artistic initiation courses at the National Society of Fine Arts, following his training in Painting at the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes in Lisbon. During the late 1980s, he began to establish himself as a painter, in exhibitions such as After Modernism (1983) and Arquipélago (1985). Alongside his artistic activity, he developed a career in teaching, as a teacher and responsible for the drawing and painting departments at Ar.Co (1986-1998). Integrated into the context of the outbreak of Post-Modernism, his work developed however outside the wild narratives surrounding the return to painting and sculpture. His works are based on the discipline of drawing, exploring with great methodological rigor pieces marked by the appropriation, decontextualization and recontextualization of popular images, whether erudite or not, linked to the popular culture of comics or to the imaginary and ruined architectures that Piranesi imagined and drew in the 17th century. At the base of this work are reproductions of images, made up of dossiers that the artist collects, saves and reuses indefinitely. All of his work, painting and drawing, starts from the appropriation of these images, their decontextualization and subsequent recontextualization, in a postmodern attitude that Calapez shares with other artists of his generation. Thematically, his painting concerns the construction of a space, or a multiplicity of spaces and, more recently, the ability to reproduce a space through painting and drawing. Architecture is one of its main references, setting the tone for reflection on space as pre-existence and as something constructed and subject to manipulation. In addition to the individual and collective exhibitions, participation in the 1986 Venice Biennale, São Paulo (1987 and 1991) and the awards he received, highlighting the União Latina (1990), EDP Pintura (2001), Nacional de Arte Graph (Madrid, 2005) and AICA (2005). Pedro Calapez He also created scenography for shows, as well as carrying out several public works, having designed a square for the Lisbon World Exhibition in 1998 and a ceramic panel for the Lisbon metro.

Ver Mais Ver Menos