[open the box] Pedro Calapez

Long before his painting was invaded by the bright colours that fill it now, before opting for the cold of aluminium as a support for the large composite panels that he later made, before the formatted canvases that he uses now, Pedro Calapez’s painting found landscape as its working field. From early on the definition of volumes that seemed to be dry, almost lunar landscapes composed horizons that corresponded to a search in painting that was common to other artists of his generation, like Pedro Cabrita Reis. In Calapez’s case, the earthy tone and the bare volume almost defined a lineage that started at Dominguez Alvarez and was hurled into the need for a return to painting that stirred up the eighties.

Yet in his painting there were two components at large that would be multiplied in different formulations: the drawing, scratched out over the painted surface (a procedure that was opposite to the tradition of the overlaying of paint) and the volume, the space that was defined as a field, a mountain, a room.

For a long time these components marked the development of his work, namely when the space became transformed into the space for the installation of the works, in the studiolo model, and these were converted into elements that themselves formed a landscape – and not just its depiction. The drawing would establish an axis of definition and would always be a counterpoint to the mass of paint, to the brush-stroke, as if Calapez lived his path between the matter-based tradition of Renoir and the drawing of Matisse, converted into incision, into a surface wound.

So this painting and these drawings by Pedro Calapez are the memory of the beginning of his career, but they also bear witness to the how of the future development of his work.

Biography
Pedro Calapez was born in Lisbon in 1953, where he lives and works. He started exhibiting in the seventies, with his first solo exhibition in 1982. His work has been shown in many different galleries both in Portugal and abroad. In 2001 he was awarded the Prémio EDP de Pintura. He has held solo exhibitions at several different institutions, such as: Carré des arts (Paris), Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon), Museu de Arte Contemporânea (MNAC) – Museu do Chiado (Lisbon), Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró (Mallorca), Centro de Arte Moderna – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon), and Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (Santiago de Compostela). He participated at the Venice Biennial (1986) and São Paulo Biennial (1987 and 1991), as well as in exhibitions at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves (Oporto), Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbon), Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo (Badajoz), Kunstmuseum Bonn (Bonn), Fondación Marcelino Botín (Santander), and Beaufort 02 – Contemporary Art Triennial, Museum voor Moderne Kunst (Ostend).

Bibliography
Pedro Calapez (cat.), Lisboa, Insti- tuto Português de Museus, 1996.
Pedro Calapez, obras escolhidas 1992-2004 (cat.), Lisboa, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2004.