Background
Jose de Guimaraes was born on November 25, 1939 in Guimaraes, Portugal.
Jose de Guimaraes was born on November 25, 1939 in Guimaraes, Portugal.
Guimaraes studied engineering, graduating from the Military Academy in Lisbon in 1965. At the same time, he independently studied the art of significant modern and historical painters, cultivating his own aesthetic based on the great works of European artists.
Jose started his career in the late 1960s, serving as a communications officer in a military commission to Africa. While in Angola, he traveled the country extensively, and embarked on an intense ethnographic study of the region and its local cultures, ranging from local tribal legal proceedings to spiritual practices. At that time, the artist also focused more on pursuing fine art, participating in several exhibitions.
Some time later, Jose focused on sculpture and in the late 1980s he was invited to Japan through the Goethe Institut, and stayed there for several years, creating some of Japan’s first public art installations, including large, graphic sculptures, a bright mural in Tokyo, and kites flown in Himeji.
After exhibiting extensively throughout Japan, the United States, and Europe, Guimaraes was engaged by the Mexican government to produce a public sculpture program in Mexico City. He dipped into a deep study of the country’s history, indigenous culture and artistic traditions in order to create the artworks, and included these cultural and artistic references into the design of a metro station in Mexico City.
In 2004 Guimaraes worked with a documentary filmmaker while preparing an exhibition of large-format paintings, that confront the deeply uncomfortable history of European colonialism.
Today Jose de Guimaraes continues to produce art inspired by travel and intercultural dialogues.
During his lifetime, his works were exhibited in different galleries and museums, including Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Soares dos Reis National Museum and others.
Jose is highly critical of the effects of European colonialism and imperialism throughout the world, and particularly in Africa.