José Manuel Espiga Pinto (Vila Viçosa, 1940 – Oporto, 2014) graduated in Sculpture at the Lisbon Fine Arts Superior School, between 1957 and 1960. He had a regular exhibiting activity since 1955, date of his first solo exhibition, in Vila Viçosa. He had solo exhibitions in places like Galeria Portico, Galeria Divulgação, Galeria 111, Galeria Alvarez and Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes. Some of his group exhibitions include: the 2nd Plastic Arts Exhibition of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (1961), the 1st Portuguese-Spanish Biennial (Lisbon and Madrid, 1968), the 12th São Paulo Biennial (1973), Abstration-Today at Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes (1975) and Contemporary Portuguese Art at the Assis Chateaubrian Museum (Brasilia, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, 1976). Between 1973 and 1974, a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation allowed him to travel to several European cities. He developed scenographer and costumes projects for the Cascais Experimental Theatre, between 1969 and 1971, and for the Ballet Group of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, between 1968 and 1982. As a teacher, he worked at the Estremoz Technical School, between 1960 and 1965, and at IADE – Visual Arts, Design and Marketing Institute, between 1979 and 1987. Espiga Pinto had a multidisciplinary practice, which included painting, sculpture, medal making, engraving, public interventions and other activities, in which the reference to his Alentejo universe was always present. The country images of this region characterize the first period of his work, which, in several aspects, is within the aesthetics of neorealism. In the second period of his work, dominated by abstractionism, the images of the Alentejo world were submitted to a geometric structure, which the artist developed in parallel to an attempt of reproduction and relation with the Symbology of the Cosmos. He was distinguished with the São Paulo Biennial Award (Brazil, 1973), the Painting Award of the Lisbon Academy of Fine Arts (1987), the Coty Award – Coin of the Year (USA, 2000), and the first prize for the coin “Luís de Camões”, by the Portuguese Republic (Mint, 2009). His work is represented at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Contemporary Art National Museum, Évora Museum, among other national and international collections.
FMV, October 2020
