Background
Helena Almeida was born in 1934 in Lisbon, Portugal. She is the daughter of the sculptor Leopoldo de Almeida.
Helena Almeida was born in 1934 in Lisbon, Portugal. She is the daughter of the sculptor Leopoldo de Almeida.
Helena Almeida studied painting at the Fine Arts Department of the University of Lisbon and graduated in 1955.
After spending some years raising her family, in 1964 Helena Almeida obtained a scholarship and moved to Paris. She exhibited for the first time in 1967. At that exhibition her works already revealed traces of future work - three-dimensional paintings reversed the physical components with the paintings viewed from back to front. Of note Almeida used shutters or blinds which transformed into paintings. Her goal was to break down the perception of a painting.
Starting in 1969 Almeida defined a new aspect of her work, the desire for self-representation, in an exhibit which became the basis of her future work. She exhibited a black and white photograph of herself wearing a canvas, arms spread and looking down - as in Christ carrying the cross. That photograph asserted her belief in "identifying herself with the being of her work." That became an ongoing theme: there was no difference between the work and artist's body. In her work, a woman's image is always present, but the image is transformed in a painting or drawing. She usually avoids creating self-portraits.
In the early 70's Almeida returned to three dimensional sketching, with drawings that use horsehair threads and appear to jump off the page. She refers to this work as "painting outwards." In this process she worked without an easel or canvas. In 1975, Helena brought together three disciplines, photography, painting and drawing. The drawing was represented by the horsehair threads; painting in three colors - blue or red sometimes black; photography serves as a meta-narrative. The broad range of her work and experimentation includes "design to cinema, from paintings to comics, from photography to sculpture, from architecture to performance." Almeida's work is shown in the Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Art in New York, the Museu d'art Contemporary de Barcelona, and also in her home town in Lisbon. Currently, she lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal.
Inspired by the Neo-Concrete movement in Brazil, Almeida experiments with ways of shattering the confines of a canvases and pushing color into three dimensions.
Helena Almeida is a feminist.
Helena married architect Artur Rosa. Their daughter Joana Rosa became an artist.
