Lourdes Castro (Funchal, 1930) moved to Lisbon at twenty years old, and attended at the Fine Arts School the special painting course, which she completed in 1956. That is where she met her future husband, René Bertholo, with whom she married the following year. In 1955, she had her first solo exhibition in Funchal. In 1957, she left for Munich with her husband, Costa Pinheiro and other artists and, at the end of the same year, she and her husband took residence in Paris. In the French capital, with a grant from the the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, she began a new project with Bertholo – the creation of KWY magazine (1958-1963), handmade, in screen printing, around which a group of artists was formed, including Christo Javacheff, Costa Pinheiro, Gonçalo Duarte, Jan Voss, José Escada e João Vieira. In the 1970’s, she was resident artist at the Deutscher Adademischer Austauschdienst, In Berlin. In her work, Castro followed unconventional paths, making collages and assemblages, in which she explored daily objects. This work, with a neo-dada origin, follows the ideas of Noveau Réalisme. In the same decade, she discovered the technique of screen printing, as well as her favourite theme, that would mark her future extensive research: shadows. After studying intensely this theme in the available images and literature, she explored the shadow projection of figures and objects, fixing their outlines in various media, such as linen sheets, Plexiglas and paper. In the same period, she also produced various Shadow Theatre shows, which were presented in several European and Latin American cities. Through these shadow theatres, she transported her research into a performative context. After 25 years of life in Paris, she decided to return to her birth city and, in 1998, she represented Portugal at the São Paulo Biennial, producing a work with Francisco Tropa entitled Peça. She was granted awards on several occasions, the most important of which were the EDP Grand Prize (2000), the CELPA / Vieira da Silva award (2004) and the AICA award (2010). Her work was widely exhibited, nationally and internationally and it was the object of important retrospective exhibitions: Além Sombra, organised by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in 2002, and À Luz da Sombra, at the Serralves Contemporary Art Museum, in 2010; and the first large retrospective in France, “Ombres & Compagnie”, at the MRAC de Sérignan, in 2019. The Portuguese Government awarded her the Cultural Merit Medal in 2020. Castro passed away in 2022, in Funchal. Her work is represented in the most relevant national collections and in various international collections.
FMV, september 2022
