Background
Jorge Martins was born on February 4, 1940 in Lisbon, Portugal.
D. João de Castro High School
Jorge Martins was born on February 4, 1940 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Jorge attended D. João de Castro High School. Then between 1957 and 1961 he attended the courses of architecture and painting at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts, which did not finish.
In 1958 Jorje Martins started engraving activity in Cooperative Society of Portuguese Engravers. A year later he presented for the first time works in collective exhibitions, and in 1961 he participated in the II Exhibition of Plastic Arts of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. That same year he left for Paris. The beginning of the war of independence in Angola and weak prospects for a career in Portugal lead to his exile for thirteen years.
In Paris he lived with Júlio Pomar, Lourdes Castro, René Bertholo, Arpad Szenes, and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. The end of the 1960s and early 70s was marked by a boost in his career: he won several prizes in Portugal, including Honorable Mentions at the Mobil and Soquil exhibitions; was awarded by the Portuguese Section of the International Association of Art Critics; and began collaboration with three galleries, including Gallery 111 in Lisbon, Galerie Bellechasse in Paris, Galerie Borjeson in Sweden. In 1973 Jorge visited the United States of America and, two years later, acquired an atelier in New York, where he would work intensely, returning to France in 1976. He also held an exhibition of drawings at the Pompidou Center in 1978.
In 1985 Jorge Martins participated in the Portuguese representation of the XVIII Biennial of San Paulo and, together with Jorge Molder, exhibited at the Center for Modern Art, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon. He exhibited again at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1988, which marked the beginning of a series of individual exhibitions in galleries in Paris and Brussels.
Since 1991 Martins settled in Lisbon. He exhibited at the Valentim de Carvalho Gallery in 1991 and held a retrospective at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1993. Throughout the decade he would also exhibit at the Galeria Luís Serpa in Lisbon in 1995, at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington in 1995, or at the Galeria Fernando Santos in Porto in 1998. In 2001 Jorge exhibited at Culturgest in Lisbon. After two years, a traveling exhibition of his work moved through the main Brazilian cities, being held in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, and Caixa Econômica Federal Gallery in Brasília.
2006 was the year of his great retrospective at the Berardo Collection Museum in Lisbon, and in 2013 Martins presented the double exhibition "The Substance of Time" at the Carmona e Costa Foundation in Lisbon, and the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto.
Jorge Martins adheres to the artistic traditions of Pop Art.
