Background
Alberto Almeida Carneiro was born in São Mamede de Coronado, in the council of Trofa, on September 20, 1937, into the family of José Alves Carneiro and Claudina (Costa) Almeida.
Lisbon
António Arroio School
Porto Higher Institute of Fine Arts
Alberto Almeida Carneiro was born in São Mamede de Coronado, in the council of Trofa, on September 20, 1937, into the family of José Alves Carneiro and Claudina (Costa) Almeida.
In 1947, Alberto began his artistic apprenticeship as image sculptor at a saint-making workshop. In the meantime, he completed his secondary education, attending evening classes at the Soares dos Reis School of Decorative Arts, in Porto, and António Arroio School, in Lisbon. In 1961, he returned to Porto to study sculpture at the Porto Higher Institute of Fine Arts. After completing his degree in 1967, he left the following year to London where he attended a postgraduate course at Saint Martin's School of Art during 1968 - 1970. Here he was a student of British sculptor Anthony Caro and of his most famous disciple, Philip King. Between 1975 and 1976, during which he studied the shapes and aesthetic procedures resulting from tilling the land, he received a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Alberto Carneiro began to exhibit his work when he was still a student: group exhibitions, in 1963, and solo exhibitions, in 1967, at the ESBAP. His artistic activity started in the seventies. He was a Sculpture teacher at the Porto Higher Institute of Fine Arts during 1972 - 1976, took over the educational and artistic departments of the Círculo de Artes Plásticas of the University of Coimbra in 1972 - 1985 and lectured at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto in 1985 - 1994.
Alberto was also the author and co-author of texts and books on Art and Pedagogy and has participated in courses, debates, and seminars on art and body dynamics. He has also dedicated himself to the study of Profound Psychology, Zen, Tantra, and Taoism, which he taught, gave lectures and wrote about. He received the influence of the "poetics of matter", the French essayist and philosopher Gaston Bachelard.
Alberto made many trips throughout his career. In 1968, he traveled to former Yugoslavia, Austria and Germany. In the seventies, he visited Mozambique, Angola, Brazil and, for the first time, Italy, a country to which he would return on many other occasions. The following decade, he continued his trips through Europe (Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, etc.), the United States of America, Morocco, and spent some time in Prague and Budapest. In the nineties, he traveled through India, Nepal, China, and Japan, where he deepened his knowledge about Hinduism, Taoism, Tantra, Zen, and gardens. Alberto Carneiro organized more than seventy individual exhibitions and participated in more than one hundred group exhibitions, in both Portugal and abroad.
Several Portuguese cities boast public sculpture works by Alberto Carneiro. In 1991, Santo Tirso received the works entitled "Water on earth, granite and water" and "The boat, the moon, and the mountain." For the Contemporary Art Conferences of Porto in 1992, he prepared a sculpture entitled "A tree is a work of art when recreated as a metaphor"; for the inauguration of the Centro Cultural de Belém, in Lisbon, in 1993, he designed the work "On the banks of a river", using water trees and glass transparencies; and for the headquarters of the Association of Architects of Porto he produced the granite sculpture "About water."
Alberto also made sculptures for the Metropolitano de Lisboa ("About trees", bronze sculptures dated 1995 - 1996), for the Expo 98' ("About the sea", a granite and wood sculpture dated 1997 - 1998), for the Almeida Garrett Library, in Porto ("Seven Lotus flower for an endless column", a wood sculpture erected in 2001), for Chaves, a bronze sculpture, for the Gardens of the Casa de Serralves ("To be a tree and art", inaugurated in 2002) In 2002, he began to set up the International Contemporary Sculpture Park in Carrazeda de Ansiães, for which be built a sculpture which now stands in the gardens of the local library.
People can also find sculptures by Alberto Carneiro outside Portugal, in particular, "The Stone Garden", in Derwenthaugh Park in Gateshead, England; a sculpture with trees, stones, earth and grass in the city park in Quito, Ecuador; a sculpture in the Sculpture Park in Woodland, in Devil’s Glen, Ashford, Wicklow, Ireland; a sculpture in the Korean Folk Village in South Korea; the sculpture "The house of earth and fire" found in the sculpture route in the Ordino Valley, Andorra; a sculpture in the city of Taoyuan, Taiwan; the sculpture "Trees flourishing in Huesca", Spain; and a sculpture in Santiago do Chile.
Alberto Carneiro was the most enthusiastic promoter of the International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture of Santo Tirso, of which he was the national artistic director. Officially established on October 20, 1996, the Museum houses works of art received from international symposia of outdoor contemporary sculpture, held in Santo Tirso since 1991.
He received many prizes and commendations, among which the National Sculpture Award in 1968, the National Fine Arts Award, given by the International Association of Art Critics in 1985 and the Art Award, by Casino da Póvoa in 2007, consisting of prize money for the purchase of the winning sculpture ("Signs and Wisdom of the Forest", 2000 - 2001), and also for the publication of the monograph entitled "Alberto Carneiro – Lição das Coisas", written by Bernardo Pinto de Almeida and directed by Armando Alves.
Represented in many museums and collections, in both Portugal and abroad, Alberto Carneiro lived and worked in his hometown. He died in Porto, on April 15, 2017, at the age of 79.
Alberto studied Deep Psychology, Zen, Tantra, and Tao to better understand the meaning of the deep relationship between body, spirit, nature and artistic creation.
Quotations: "My training, my convictions are linked to the whole world of my childhood... I had to invent almost everything I needed;... From the materials of the earth, to construct the world in it, to comprehend it loftily from within, and thus to structure a bodily schema which has increasingly been the image of the things of nature."
Quotes from others about the person
Nature sustains the work of Alberto Carneiro, which is better seen as the outcome of an interpretative life experience than as an argument or an attempt to address a particular subject. Since the beginning of his career, his various series and works have examined the ways in which nature imposes on any visual notion of landscape and finds a corporal connection with the human.
Alberto Carneiro married Ana Maria Moreira Magalhães on December 22, 1972, but the couple divorced in October 1978. They had one common child, Claudio Magalhães Carneiro.
