Surfaces by Pedro Chorão - Portal do Município de Vila Nova de Famalicão - Portugal

Ala da Frente Municipal Gallery | Opening: 3rd February at 6pm

Free admission | Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday: 10.00 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday: 2.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.

Travelling the world attentively brings back a plenitude of sensations, making us unique through our apprehensions and lived experiences. Showing these particularities that are reached by the sensitive eye is a manifestation that comes from those who dedicate themselves to the labours of artistic creation and who, through this, grant us access to unique spaces and sensibilities. 
Pedro Chorão has developed a wide-ranging body of work based on a very refined sensibility, resulting in works with a careful aesthetic sense and refined wisdom.

The exhibition on show in the Front Wing is the result of a selection of photographic works made under a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1987/88/89, in the Alentejo region. These works are the result of a very meticulous and attentive journey in which every detail, every fragment, every detail of light, every texture became the object of attention and resulted in a photograph. These images have a lucid composition and a differentiated perception. Fragments are taken autonomously and elucidate simple shapes, colours and textures. 
The painting shows sensitivity and stimulates contemplation; we are led to linger our gaze on the surfaces, where the sense of space is projected beyond understanding, beyond comprehension. The surfaces suspend us in a testimony of mystery. António Gonçalves

Biographical note:
Born in Coimbra, Portugal, in 1945.
His first interest was biology and he studied in Liverpool, at the North-East Liverpool Technical College, from 1963 to 1967. It was there that she was inspired to start painting, admiring the British pop artists of the time who hung on the walls of the public library she frequented daily.
He then moved to Paris and studied art history and archaeology at the École du Louvre and the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Sorbonne), at which point he began to paint seriously.
From 1968 to 1972 he did 4 years of compulsory military service; 2 years in Portugal and 2 years on the Cape Verde islands.
On his return from Africa, he completed a Master's degree in Painting at the University of Lisbon (Faculty of Letters).
He then returned to Paris with a scholarship awarded by the Gulbenkian Foundation (Painting) from 1976 to 1978. He was later awarded another grant from the same foundation to paint in Lisbon from 1987 to 1989.

Stand ou the following awards: 
AICA (Association Internationalle des Critiques d'Art) by art critics Dore Ashton, René Berger and Sílvia Chicó.
III Fine Arts Exhibition, Gulbenkian Foundation, 1987
Bicentenary of the Ministry of Finance, 1988
Lagos Biennial, 1990

His public works:
Tapestry (12 square metres) for CGD Bank.
Tiled mural (220 square metres) in the city of Covilhã, (Portugal), 2004
Pedro Chorão's work is currently represented in the main national collections and museums in Lisbon and Porto.

In the field of illustration:
Covers for several poetry books and for "Pour un Morale de L'Ambiguité", Simone de Beauvoir, Éditions Gallimard, Paris.
More than 150 exhibitions (from 1972 to 2009) in Portugal, Caracas (Venezuela), Paris, Lund/Sweden (Museum of Modern Art), Belgrade, Lyon, Azores, Madrid, Niterói (Brazil) and Tokyo (Museum of Modern Art).