António Charrua (Lisbon, 1925 – Évora, 2008) attended high school in Évora, and later in Parede. In 1944, he began the preparatory course of Engineering of the Faculty of Science, which he did not complete. The same happened with the course of Architecture at the Fine Arts Faculty of Lisbon, which he attended in 1950. He had his first solo exhibition in 1953, at the António Carneiro Gallery, in Oporto. From that year on, he had regular exhibitions in Portugal and abroad. In Portugal, he participated in the most relevant group exhibitions of his time, such as the General Exhibition of Plastic Arts at the National Society of Fine Arts (1953), the Exhibition of Young Painting at the Março Gallery (1953) and the the Exhibitions of Plastic Arts of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (1957, 1961 and 1986). During the 1950’s, he began working in engraving, attending the Cooperativa dos Gravadores Portugueses. In 1960, as a grantee of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, he travelled to Spain, Belgium, France, Holland, Italy and Switzerland. Initially, his work was strongly influenced by Van Gogh and Picasso. In the 1960’s, however, Pop Art would define his plastic language. Throughout this decade, he had numerous exhibitions, namely in 1965, the representation of Portugal at the Tokyo Biennial. He collaborated with Editorial Presença, Portugália Editora and Sociedade de Expansão Cultural in the creation of various book covers. In 1970, he had an important solo exhibition at the inauguration of Numaga II Gallery, in Neuchâtel. In the following years, he started working with stained glass, tapestry and tiles, travelling frequently to Switzerland, where he showed his work in various galleries. In 1990, the return to the national context was marked by the solo exhibition at Palmira Suso Gallery, and by several awards, such as the Municipal Merit Medal, which he received in Évora. During his last years, he lived in Évora, Santiago do Cacém and Torres Vedras, and continued his work with tiles and stained glass, even after the end of his exhibitory period. In 2021, his work was the object of a retrospective exhibition at the Évora Museum and, in 2015, there was an anthological exhibition at the Modern Art Centre of the Caloust Gulbenkian Foundation, titled X as in Charrua.
FMV, June 2020
