Jorge Queiroz, a visual artist, was announced on 14 April as the winner of the Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize for his work ‘Duende’. In the first edition of this award for contemporary Portuguese artists, 214 works were considered, 30 of which were selected as finalists. The prize jury included the artists Ai WeiWei and Joana Vasconcelos, the director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Philippe Vergne, the curator and former director of Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, David Elliott, the president and director of the Design Museum, London, Tim Marlow, the artistic director of Pirelli HangarBicocca, Vicente Todolí, and the head of Philips in Portugal and Spain, Maura Marvão.

The 30 works that reached the final are on display in the Palácio das Artes, in Porto, until 30 April, after which they will travel to the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes, in Lisbon, where they can be seen from 27 May to 18 June, and then to the Museu Berardo Estremoz, where they will be exhibited from 22 June to 15 August.

The income from the sale of the finalists’ works, with the exception of the winning piece, will go towards financing the charitable programmes of the Sovereign Art Foundation, which, since it was founded in 2003, has had the mission of taking the therapeutic benefits of art to disadvantaged children, as well as supporting and promoting contemporary artists.

Jorge Queiroz (Lisbon, 1966) is represented in the Modern Art Centre collection and some of his more recent works can be seen in the exhibition Jorge Queiroz and Arshile Gorky. To Go To, from 8 July 2022, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.