Dionísio Pinheiro Portrait

Dionísio Pinheiro was born in Águeda, on the 24th September 1891 and died on the 7th October 1968, in Porto. Being a man of humble origins, he started his active life since a young age. After completing the third grade in the School of Adro, in Águeda, he began working with his godfather in the commerce of fabrics and then, at the age of 11, he moved to Porto to work as an apprentice cashier in the Armazéns Cunha. As he revealed outstanding intellectual and working abilities, he was later invited to be partner of the company. He attended the night school at Commercial School Raul Doria and subsequently founded the Textile Factory of Rebordões in Santo Tirso. His intense commercial and industrial activity, combined with his high sensitivity, led him to a great material and cultural enrichment. His accomplishments allowed him to undertake charitable actions in his hometown and build a valuable artistic patrimony.
Having no offspring, Dionísio Pinheiro established by will the Dionísio Pinheiro and Alice Cardoso Pinheiro Foundation on the 21th August 1968; in the following year, on May the 5th its bylaws were approved by ministerial dispatch and soon publicized in the Diário da República on the 21st of August of the same year, being its “Public Utility” recognized by the Civil Government of Aveiro on the July 4th 1969. His testamentary dispositions were that the headquarters of the Foundation, where his art collection was to be hosted and publicized, would be in Águeda, and that its purposes would be Culture, Recreation, Education and Social Assistance, as well as the provision of School Awards and Scholarships.
Ricardo Navarro Poves was a neorealist painter born in Valencia, Spain, that followed a classical structure but with a modern simplification, reaching its highest point in the portrait: he could imprint the very souls of the portrayed on canvas, making them fascinating and mysterious, specially in the feminine portraits. He also painted superb landscapes of Porto and Paris. Despite being a little known artist in his home country, he had some significance in the Porto arts scene. He lived with and portrayed Dionísio Pinheiro e Alice Cardoso Pinheiro. He died in the year of 1967 in Brazil.