André Goezu was born in a Jewish family in Antwerp, at the brink of the second World War. He escaped the fate of so many other Jews (among them his father) by living hidden with a host family in the Flemish countryside. Goezu has stated that it was during these years he started to draw, and the particular symbolic world he will later cultivate in his art appears to be rooted in these dark years of his childhood. An example would be the recurring motive of the tree, with its connotations of embeddedness and protection. After studying at the Fine Arts Academy of his hometown he receives a scholarship to go to Paris, where he later settles permanently. Due to the upheavals of 1968 he is unable to attend the Academy of Paris; instead, he starts to explore engraving techniques in the many ateliers which existed in the city. From then on he has pursued a path which gravitates around engraving but also includes painting, drawing and illustration. Especially in the latter, he cultivates a particular relationship with literature, through illustrations of French and Belgian classics (Arthur Rimbaud, Emile Verhaeren), collaborations with contemporary writers and artist editions. Goezu was one of the many artists brought to Portugal by the Sociedade Cooperativa de Gravadores Portugueses [Cooperative Society of Portuguese Engravers], to which his presence in the museum's collection is due. The Portuguese art historian José Augusto-França defined this relatively unknown artist in a rare reference as a “painter of melancholically happy images, made of memories, images which are records of subtly fixed moments, using a range of references which the artist himself confesses being 'made of some elements, personal symbols', horses, trees, marching bodies, faces.” (Colóquio/Artes, n. 55, Dezember 1982, p. 76)  GV July 2012