Lourdes Castro

She was born in Madeira Island (Funchal), in 1930. She studied painting at “Escola de Belas Artes de Lisboa”. Her first solo exhibition took place in Funchal during 1955. In 1958 she moved to Paris with a scholarship from the Gulbenkian Foundation and worked with Arpad Szenes. Castro is one of the founders of KWY. In the 70's she was a resident artist at the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, in Berlin. During the same period she worked with René Bertholo and Manuel Zimbro in a shadow theatre. She received the EDP award and was invited to represent Portugal at the 24th “São Paulo Biennale”, in partnership with Francisco Tropa, in 1986. She had also represented Portugal in 1959 and 1980 at the same event. During 1992 Gulbenkian Foundation organized the first major retrospective exhibition of her work: “Além da Sombra”. In 2003, the Serralves Foundation dedicated the exhibition “À luz da sombra” to her, where the work of Castro and Manuel Zimbro were shown together for the first time. Her work is present in several public collections such as: Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museum of Modern Art, Havana; Museum of Modern Art, Belgrade; National Museum of Warsaw, Lodz and Vroclaw. She has been working with Portalegre Manufacture since 1984.