Nadir Afonso (1920, Chaves, Portugal – 2013, Cascais, Portugal) studied architecture at the Oporto Superior School of Fine Arts and was part of the Independent’s Group in Oporto, with Júlio Pomar, Fernando Lanhas, Júlio Resende and others. In 1946, he left for Paris to study painting at the École des Beaux-Arts of Paris, France. He collaborated with architects Le Corbusier, Fernando Távora and Oscar Niemeyer. In Paris, he worked at the studio of Fernand Léger and he later joined artists interested in kinetic art (Vasarely, Mortensen, Bloc, among others), developing studies on geometry and optics that originated a series of paintings he titled Espaceillimité. Nadir Afonso divided his time between architecture and painting, until he chose to dedicate himself exclusively to painting in 1965.
In parallel with a vast artistic production, he developed a refined aesthetic reflection and he published various essays on art, among which: La Sensibilité Plastique (1958, Paris), Mécanismes de la Création Artistique (1970, Switzerland), Aesthetic synthesis (1974, Oporto), Le sens de l’art (1983, Lisbon), O Trabalho Artístico. Reflexões [The Artistic Work. Reflections] (2011, Lisbon). In his long curriculum of solo and group exhibitions, one should emphasise the Portuguese representation at the São Paulo Biennale, Brazil (1961, 1969), the retrospective exhibition at the Centre Culturel Portugais of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in Paris (1970), and the presentation at the Musée de l’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1976). In 2010, the Soares dos Reis National Museum, Oporto and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisbon, presented a retrospective exhibition of his work and published an important monographic study.
In 1967, Nadir Afonso received the National Painting Award and in 1969 the Amadeo Souza-Cardoso Prize. In 2016, the Nadir Afonso Contemporary Art Museum was inaugurated, in Chaves, a project by Álvaro Siza.
His work is represented at the Centre Georges Pompidou, France; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Portugal; S. Paulo Modern Art Museum, Brazil; Museum Im Kulturspeicher, Germany; Chiado Contemporary Art National Museum, Portugal; Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest, Hungary, among others.
PS, January 2021
