[open the box] Jorge Vieira

Jorge Vieira belongs to our memory of some places in Lisbon. In Rua Braamcamp there was a statue by Jorge Vieira at the entrance to a chemist’s, a work that was from a universe similar to that of Henry Moore’s, though smoother and more delicate. These were bodies in an embrace, and hugged the street in the strangeness of their metamorphosis into one being. In Expo’98 the Homem-sol is a giant that guards those who shelter in the shade. These are marks of welcoming in the city, pieces of our affective map of the urban space, and among the best works of art in the urban space that Lisbon possesses

Jorge Vieira’s artistic career is long, having started in 1949, when he was probably the first Portuguese abstract sculptor. Later on, in the fifties, his characters would lose their plinth, touch the ground and take on humanity. They have become delicate bodies, reticulated and almost human structures that mix, morph and go together. They define a life of their own, they inhabit their spaces and they go on to belong to a gallery of bodies that fill our imaginary of sculpture.

Biography
Jorge Vieira (Lisbon, 1922-Évora, 1998) graduated at the Escola de Belas-Artes de Lisboa, initially in Architecture and then in Sculpture, finishing in 1953. His first solo exhibition was in 1949 at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes (Lisbon). He participated in the general Artes plásticas exhibitions in 1947 and 1951. In 1953 he represented Portu- gal at the São Paulo Biennial; in the same year he received an award from the London Institute of Con- temporary Art, which allowed him to attend the Slade School of Art, where he worked with Henry Moore. It was also in London that he participated in the exhibition Contemporary sculpture (1955-1956). In the fifties he began a series of collaborations that led to interventions in public space, such as reliefs, sculptures or decorative panels, like those of the Saldanha underground railway station (Lisbon, 1996). He participated in the Brussels international exhibition in 1958, and in 1961 he was awarded the First Prize for Sculpture at the II Exposição de artes plásticas by the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. In 1995, the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea (MNAC) Museu do Chiado devoted a significant retrospective exhibition to him.

Bibliography
Jorge Vieira (cat.), Lisboa, Instituto Português de Museus, MNAC – Museu do Chiado, 1995.
Oliveira, Luísa Soares de, Jorge Vieira, o escultor solar, Lisboa, Editorial Caminho, 2007.