Born in 1934 in Vidago, Trás-os-Montes. In 1951, he entered the Escola Superior de Belas Artes de Lisboa, where he attended the first two years of the painting course.

He began exhibiting in 1956, the year he joined the coffee group. Gelo, in Lisbon, when he shared a studio above this café. with José Escada, René Bertholo and Gonalo Duarte. The four, together with Lourdes Castro, Christo and Jan Voss, later founded the KWY group in Paris. But first, in 1957, João Vieira left for Paris where he was born. student of Henri Goetz at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In the French capital, as a scholarship holder from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, he works with the painter Arpad Szenes, husband of the painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva.

João Vieira’s first solo exhibition is made in 1959 in Lisbon, at the Diário de Notícias Gallery. After other visits to Paris and also to London, where at the end of 1964 he taught at Maidstone College of Art, he returned to Lisbon at the beginning of 1967 and began working almost exclusively as a theatrical set designer. The connection to the theater will have expression in the visual arts, as it is manifested in his first performance simultaneously with his exhibition O Espírito da Letra, held at Galeria Judite Dacruz in 1970.

Throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s he held several individual and group exhibitions, including the one dedicated to the KWY group by the Centro Cultral de Belém in April 2001. In recent years I was preparing a solo exhibition for the Cordoaria Nacional building.

Died in September 2009.