Fernão Cruz was born in 1995, in Lisbon. With a degree in Painting from the Lisbon Faculty of Fine Arts, between 2016 and 2017 he lived and studied in Barcelona, at Universitat de Barcelona: Facultat de Belles Arts. In the same year, he was resident artist at Banana.Jam Art Space in Shenzhen, China, and at Centro de Estudos de Arte Contemporânea in Vila Nova da Barquinha, in 2018. In parallel, also in 2018, he launched Stretching can be easy, an author’s book, in collaboration with Rui da Paz. In his work, he explores different media of artistic production, painting, drawing, sculpture or installation. Cruz won the 2017 Young Art National Prize by Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa and the Milennium BCP Foundation. He’s been showing his work regularly since 2015, namely in the following solo exhibitions: Fortaleza, Travessa da Ermida, Lisbon, 2018, Quarto Blindado, CIAJG – José de Guimarães International Arts Centre, Guimarães, 2021, Morder o Pó, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon. He’s been part of group exhibitions, such as Quatro Elementos, Oporto Municipal Gallery, Oporto, 2017, Constelações, Berardo Collection Museum, Lisbon, 2019 or Red Light: Sexualidade e Representação, at the Norlinda and José Lima Collection, Centro de Arte Oliva, São João da Madeira, 2020. His work is represented in various collections, such as CACE: Coleção de Arte Contemporânea do Estado Português, Modern Art Centre of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Norlinda and José Lima Collection, Fernando Figueiredo Ribeiro Collection, EDP Foundation /MAAT Art Collection, PLMJ Foundation, among others.
CQ, August 2022
