The work of Fernando Lanhas explores non-figurative painting as means to transform and appropriate reality. Since 1943, he participated in national exhibitions of modern and abstract art, which set his work apart from the prevalent neo-realist idiom of his time. Lanhas participated in several official representations in international exhibitions as the Biennales of São Paulo in 1953 and in 1958, or the Venice Biennale in 1960. His activity is impregnated with a systematic and exploratory curiosity about that which is unknown to him. The canvas O.32-60 (title that means: oil, work number thirty two, realised in 1960), belonging to the collection of the Modern Art Centre, is a notable example of one of his geometric abstractions. Created in smooth tonalities, the pictorial surface results from an investigation conducted by Lanhas to bring about a colour palette from the powder produced by crushing a selection of pebbles collected from the sea.

In the 1950s, Lanhas paints the rocks from Serra de Valongo and creates several oil paintings on tiny pebbles. He engages in the identification and inventory of sites of archaeological interest, mainly on the Northern region of Portugal, from which result several studies and publications made together with Domingos de Pinho Brandão (1966-1969), amongst others. Fernando Lanhas was Director of the Ethnographical and Historical Museum of Porto (1973-1993). He developed various architectural projects and organised several exhibition layouts in the Coimbra Monographic Museum, Military Museum of Porto and in the Mineralogical Museum of the Science Faculty of Porto University, amongst others. His work has been attracting a growing recognition, as attested by the retrospectives organized in 1987 by the Portuguese State Secretariat of Culture in Lisbon, and more recently, in 2001, by the Serralves Museum in Porto and by Lugar do Desenho in Gondomar.

Sofia Ponte

May 2010