Born in 1932, in Abragão, Penafiel. Exercising his activity mainly in the area of painting, he was also a teacher and art critic, member of the A.I.C.A.. In this context, he published several articles on topics such as Plastic Expression of Children, Dadaism, Zen Philosophy and Writing. In Paris, he received a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, between 1966 and 1969. In 1971 he received an Honorable Mention from the Portuguese Art Criticism Award, by Soquil. Between 1972 and 1992, he was a member of the Governing Bodies of the National Society of Fine Arts. In 1998 he received the Almada Negreiros Prize and, in 2005, the Grand Prize of the Vila Nova de Cerveira Biennial. Author of the books: Narratives of Dreams and Automatic Texts (1950-51), published by CPS, 1995; The Painting of Children and Us - Parents, Teachers and Educators, 1978; Art Discovers Children and Children Discover Art (4 volumes) and Dádá-Zen/Pintura-Escrita, 2005. In his artistic career, he had an initial surrealist phase, originating from theories Freudian ideas in terms of the fantastic, later evolving into a non-geometric and gestural abstractionism, which therefore values the stain and the free and impulsive stroke. This painting has the intention, as the artist himself said in 2003, of “reducing oneself to little or almost nothing, due to the liberating void”. He died in 2022, aged 90.
