Lourdes Castro

The artist lived in Paris from 1958 onward. Together with other young Portuguese artists in cultural exile there, including René Bértholo, António Costa Pinheiro, Gonçalo Duarte, José Escada and João Vieira, she founded the magazine KWY, which would feature contributions from figures such as Christo and Jan Voss. She was constantly creating other books and albums, and played freely with genres, formats, supports and techniques.

Her penchant for letters, poetry and typography is also apparent from the artist’s high relief and bas-reliefs, created through the assembly, collaging and painting of everyday and domestic objects in boxes. One fundamental practice in her work is to capture, project and then trace the outline of the shadow of objects, especially plants and her own friends. Painted onto canvas, embroidered on sheets or cut out of acrylic, these transposed silhouettes summon a presence within absence, like a twin figure, a reincarnation of the original.