Gil Teixeira Lopes

Individual show of printmaking work by Gil Teixeira Lopes (Mirandela, Portugal, 1936) included in the II Exposição Nacional de Gravura (Second National Printmaking Exhibition) thanks to winning the exhibition prize at the first event in 1976. Despite being an individual exhibition, the event was held at the FCG’s Temporary Exhibition Gallery, at the same time as, and in a parallel wing to, prints by Sérgio Pinhão (1949), the other prizewinning artist in 1976, who replicated the feat at the II Exposição Nacional de Gravura (1979).

These initiatives were promoted by Gravura – Sociedade Cooperativa de Gravadores Portugueses, in cooperation from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG) and the Secretary of State for Culture.

Since 1976, and the commemorations of 20 years of the Portuguese Printmakers’ Cooperative, the FCG programme had seen more and more events and exhibitions dedicated to printmaking. Internal memos in the Gulbenkian Archives show the FCG’s interest in joining the organisation of an event with greater international repercussions, with a discussion on the intention to create, in partnership, an International Printmaking Biennale, an initiative that was repeatedly postponed (Note by the Fine Arts Department, 7 Sept. 1978, Gulbenkian Archives, SBA 02301).

The exhibition comprised 41 prints produced between 1968 and 1979, presenting a large range of techniques: etching, aquatint, lithography, screen printing and even mixed-engraving processes.

Painter Fernando de Azevedo (1923-2002) discussed the work carried out by Gil Teixeira Lopes in the following laudatory terms: “Gil Teixeira Lopes (...) put on an individual exhibition where the overview of his already extensive work as a printmaker was restated and confirmed his symbolist expressionism and mastery of the technical processes with which he makes it, qualities that have established the artist’s name internationally at the most important event that has always honoured national printmaking” (Azevedo, Colóquio. Artes, Mar. 1980, p. 68).

Meanwhile, for critic and artist Rocha de Sousa (1938), Teixeira Lopes’s work deals with “(...) very particular imagery, oscillating between the poetic quality of the ancient, a certain ritualisation regarding objects and characters whose roots belong to us, and themed relationships of varying levels of commitment that focus on dramas and situations of contemporary mankind” (Gil Teixeira Lopes, 1979).

On the request of the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs of the Autonomous Region of Madeira, the exhibition was later put on in Funchal at the Municipal Theatre, part of the tour of the II Exposição Nacional de Gravura to the city.