Background

Dacosta was born in Angra do Heroísmo, Azores, Portugal, on November 3, 1914, into a family of craftsmen. His father was a woodworker and taught at Angra’s Commercial and Industrial School. Dacosta's grandfather was a woodcarver who worked at various churches on the island.

Education

While still in his teenage years, he started to paint local landscapes in oil, demonstrating an artistic ability. He completed his studies at the Angra High School and in 1935 left the islands, moving to Lisbon. There he attended the School of Fine Arts (now Faculty of Fine Arts at University of Lisbon). He attended it until 1941 but never graduated.

Career

Dacosta entered the Portuguese art scene in 1940, together with fellow painter António Pedro and sculptor Pamela Boden. That year he took part in a small exhibition at Casa Repe in Lisbon. This exhibition showed a strong surrealist tendency in his artworks. The artist introduced in the Portuguese painting circle the possible combination between a surrealist, dream-like state and a particular interpretation of the myths from the islands of his origin, the Azores archipelago. This combination is vivid in such his paintings as Diálogo (Dialogue, 1939), Antítese da Calma (The Antithesis of Calm, 1940), Serenata Açoriana (Azores' Serenate, 1940) and A Festa (The Festival, 1942).

Plenty of his surrealist paintings were destroyed by fire in 1944 in the studio where he was working. Throughout the 1940s António Dacosta wrote art criticism for Portuguese newspapers and also illustrated books for several contemporary Portuguese authors.

The artist moved to France in 1947, when the French government awarded him a grant to spend a year in Paris. For the first time in his life, he was in direct contact with original masterpieces as well as the art pieces of contemporary international painters. During the second half of the 1940s, he managed to become a central figure for the young people at the Lisbon Surrealist Group.

During the post-war period, the artist began to doubt the importance of his own oeuvre. Little by little, he stopped painting but still in 1948 sent two of his paintings to the Surrealist Group Show in Lisbon. Concurrently, Dacosta worked as an art critic and a correspondent for several newspapers, such as O Estado de São Paulo, Acção e Diário Popular. Between 1947 and 1949 António Dacosta artist started to produce abstract paintings. He held his first successful solo show at the Galeria de Março in Lisbon in 1952. By 1953 he had ceased painting, becoming a full-time reporter. His articles, including those written for Portuguese magazines, were later published in book-form "Dacosta em Paris" by Assirio & Alvim (1999).

In 1969 António Dacosta attended a retrospective of his artworks from the period of 1939-1948 at the Galeria Buchholz in Lisbon. Rediscovering his earlier paintings at this show perhaps gave him a new artistic impetus. In 1971 he moved to Janville, a small town south of Paris, where he started creating little objects, "things," as he called them. Encouraged by artist friends, including the Surrealist, Manuel Alves, he started to buy painting materials.

In 1975, after a 25-year gap, Dacosta officially returned to painting. His previous surrealism disappeared and he became associated with a completely new style, using pagan-religious images from his childhood in the Azores. In 1983 a solo exhibit at Galeria 111 in Lisbon revealed his recent art pieces, which were all sold to private and public collections. This success encouraged Dacosta to create more artworks.

Later, the artist held exhibitions at Galeria Zen, Porto, in 1984; Portuguese pavilion, Biennale of 1985, São Paulo, Brazil, in 1985; Foundation Calouste Gulbenkian, Paris, and Centro de Arte Moderna, Lisbon and Casa de Serralves Museum, Porto, both in 1988.

António Dacosta was commissioned to decorate a wall in the new building of the Azorean Parliament in Horta. He spent several months there, installing a series of fifty-four heads in bas-relief representing Azorean citizens. He started a series of drawings to decorate the walls of Cais do Sodré; it was a new subway station in Lisbon. However, due to problems with health, the commission was completed under the auspices of his friend and fellow artist Pedro Morais.

During the last few years of his life, Dacosta turned to poetry. His poems would be published only posthumously, in 1994, in A Cal dos Muros (The Lime on the Walls).

Achievements

• 

  António Dacosta was a truly eminent artist, who became a pioneer of the surrealistic movement in Portugal. His works were highly respected and acclaimed by numerous art critics.
  
  The artist received the AICA Prize for the Arts in 1984. Dacosta was also honoured with the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit by Portuguese President, Mário Soares, in 1988.
  
  In the year 2014, it was the centenary of his birth and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation held a retrospective. The show was curated by José-Luís Porfírio, former director of the Museum of Ancient Art, Lisbon. A catalogue raisonné was created by Fernando Rosas Dias, of the School of Fine Arts, Lisbon, and was published in 2012 with reproductions of his entire oeuvre.
  
  Currently, Dacosta's paintings are included in numerous public and private collections of art in Europe and the United States.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Fonte de Sintra I

  • Não há sim sem não - O Eremita

  • Cena Aberta

  • O Usurário

  • I'm Late

  • Està Calor em Evora

  • Amor Jacente

  • A Menina a Bandeira III

  • Sonho de Fernando Pessoa debaixo de uma latada numa tarde de Verão

  • Serenata Açoriana

  • A Festa

  • Melancolia

  • Dois limões em férias

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Bicho Bichial

  • Scène surréaliste

  • Untitled

  • A Tesoura

  • Island

  • Tau

  • Untitled

  • Fonte de Sintra XVI

  • Cena aberta

  • A Leda e o Cisne

  • Antítese da calma

  • Três Estrelas Brancas

  • O usurário

  • Sonho de Fernando Pessoa Debaixo de uma Latada numa Tarde de Verão

  • Fonte de Sintra

  • Untitled

Connections

Dacosta was married to a woman named Miriam Rewald, who was the gallerist. The couple gave birth to two children.

Spouse:

Miriam Rewald

References

• António Dacosta
  1984