Background
Mario Eloy de Jesus Pereira was born in 1900 in Alges. The son of a jeweler and grandson of actors, he inherited a taste for pictorial art.
Mario Eloy de Jesus Pereira was born in 1900 in Alges. The son of a jeweler and grandson of actors, he inherited a taste for pictorial art.
Mario Eloy was generally self-taught. In 1913, he left high school to attend the School of Fine Arts in Lisbon, which he left two years later.
His style shows the influence of painters like van Gogh, Picasso and, mostly, from the German expressionist painting, that he admired during his staying in Germany, from 1927 to 1932, especially Carl Hofer.
After returning to Portugal, he became the best representative from expressionism in the Portuguese painting. Some of his latter works, like "Enterro", in his references, seems to anticipate the surrealism painting in Portugal.
In year 1944, he had to leave painting due to a serious mental disease and spent the rest of his life in a mental institution at Rio de Mouro, where he died.
In January 1929, he married Theodore Severin, a few days after the birth of his son Mario Antonio.