https://issuu.com/pedrocalapez/docs/2015_12_revista_aena_39_calapez_ent … [Read more...]
Luísa Soares de Oliveira – “à volta de um livro”
Nuvens lentas, 2013
Não conhecia o poema de Pessoa mas posso agora dizer que estas minhas nuvens não me dão sono. Na senda das associações melhor será convocar a aguarela de Dürer, em que várias manchas cinzentas recordam-lhe um sonho agitado de chuvas torrenciais provenientes de poderosas nuvens. Refere Dürer que caiam dos altos céus com grande intensidade e ruído. No meu caso a líquida aguarela … [Read more...]
On colour, 2012
Thinking Colours Conference Perception, Translation and Representation March 29-31, 2012 Faculty of Human Sciences, Catholic University of Portugal Pedro Calapez (keynotespeaker) Please read the article here. … [Read more...]
O corpo faz-se corpo, 2012
Opção 1 (da eficácia dos fluidos): Não posso dizer que o corpo, no sentido dum físico corpo humano, tenha sido tema recorrente na minha pintura. Poderei no entanto constatar que a minha pintura se relaciona com o corpo, com o meu corpo, pois a escala do meu fazer pelo traço ou pela massa de fluidos que utilizo, mantém com ele especial e inevitável ligação. É na dimensão do … [Read more...]
escala de cor, 2009
It was only after I had built up the main body of red that the problem of color became crucial, when the only colors that would work were yellow and blue. - B. Newman Blue in the fold of the mantle, ultramarine from afar, soft violet, harsh yellow, running red, disturbed raw Sienna, ochre on the edge of the door, magic emerald, smoke black... Painting a colour. Another … [Read more...]
ars combinatoria, 2008
uma casa. duas mesas. alguns ramos. um tremor nas mãos. escorre a água sobre a mesa. passo os dedos pelo musgo verde. mordo os dedos até fazer sangue. o frio passa mas vai voltar. a incidência da luz nas dobras na cortina acentuam o suave ondulado. há restos dentro das caixas. apagam-se as lombadas dos livros. o isolado caminho causa desorientação. horizonte limpo. algum pó se … [Read more...]
Delfim Sardo, “Intervals, distances and likenesses”
Delfim Sardo, a conversation with Calapez You began your career in painting but before that you were a photographer. Did your work in that field have an effect on the work you have developed in painting? The other day I was just thinking about that. I held two exhibitions of photographs, although professionally I was a commercial photographer. I’m not sure whether there is a … [Read more...]
J. C. A. Vidal, “The invisible paintings of Pedro Calapez”
The artistic path of Pedro Calapez (Lisbon, 1953) is as broad as it is consequent. With initial training devoted to engineering and an early dedication to photography, Calapez holds his first solo exhibition in 1982, in the Galeria Diferença, in Lisbon. Two decades later he is rightly held as one of the most well-known and valorised Portuguese artists. The constructive nature … [Read more...]
Nomena Sruß, “a conversation-interview with Pedro Calapez”
Transcription of a conversation-interview conducted on Sylt Island, in Northern Germany, at an artists’ residence organised by the Sylt Quelle Kunst Raum. On a sunny, cloudy day, I was asked What isn’t art? Or: What isn’t art anymore? Do you have to have a special talent? Love or money? What is important today? Why do I buy? Do I sell the art I make? Is it a trade? Where or … [Read more...]
Mariano Navarro, “Reason of the gaze”
For this exhibition in the Casa da Cerca, Branca e neutra claridade [White and Neutral Clarity], Calapez has decided to start chronologically at the end of the last century, with the series Desenhos contínuos [Continuous Drawings], from 1999. Five large-scale drawings in dry pastel on paper, which depict a sort of forest, a wood synthesised in a ballet of lines drawn out by the … [Read more...]
Emília Ferreira, “the line and outline”
Emília Ferreira: What is the founding element in your work? Drawing or colour? Pedro Calapez: If one thinks in historical terms, the first works are drawings, but drawings that have a structure similar to painting. They are not the founding drawings for painting nor for any other works, study drawings... They have nothing to do with the idea of the drawing as a concept. They … [Read more...]
Emília Ferreira, “how wan-fo was saved”
It is now commonplace to state that the matter with which artists work comes from that which has already been worked on by their peers. The genetic lines that are thus set out and rooted create the imaginary and grammar of each artist. To gaze on the gaze of another, to see the real world through the filter of imagination, of the hand, of another person is artists’ favourite … [Read more...]
J. C. A. Vidal, “on abstract, Pedro Calapez’s latest painting”
Pedro Calapez (Lisbon, 1953) occupies a prominent position on the contemporary Portuguese art scene, particularly in a filed like the pictorial, in which the main authorities of his country, celebrated internationally over the last decades, are currently showing signs of exhaustion. Pedro Calapez’s interests have moved him over three decades of artistic activity to draw up … [Read more...]
Miguel Amado, “the painter’s energetic action”
Post-modernism, with its stressing of stylistic pluralism – the profusion of artistic trends that are indifferently validated by the critical exercise – has stood as the hegemonic cultural logic of contemporaneity. The beginning of this process dates from post World War II, when the neoavant-gardes of the 1960s put into practice the Duchampian legacy of the readymade, thus … [Read more...]
CV
Pedro Calapez was born in Lisbon (1953) where he lives and works. He began taking part in exhibitions in the seventies and in 1982 had his first solo exhibition. He has exhibited his work individually in various galleries and museums, most notably Histórias de objectos , Casa de la Cittá, Roma, Carré des Arts, Paris and Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (1991); Petit jardin et … [Read more...]
Renewal
Changes are made within the logic of looking for results in my work. There is always a need to take advantage of the options that turn up in the working process, and when they cannot be developed at the time I make a note of them in my book and they remain there so I can work on them later on in the future. I see technologies – old and new - as an extension of my body. I use … [Read more...]
Memory banks
There is the idea of something that was seen (a work one likes in the history of art, texts, photos, some detail, theme or subject), anything that is worth exploring. Following this is a natural development of this idea, often on paths that stray considerably from these starting points. Besides the computer, where I keep my “memory banks”, I have some notebooks in which I … [Read more...]
Inspirations
I believe anything you do is work, and that work always relates to everything that has gone before: art is only art to the extent that it relates to the history of art. The way in which individuals pick up previous givens, transforming and developing them is the individual’s artistic art. But when that work is merely producing a little of what has already been said, I find it … [Read more...]
Spectator
What fascinates me is looking at a look. We usually do not expect a drawing to look at us. It is something that might happen, or might not or never happen. there are many occasions when you look at painting, in which you are involved in a specific way. This involvement concerns you and what you are giving back to it. Rejecting previous lines of work, re-thinking tradition and … [Read more...]
Colour
The choice of colours is very intuitive and also very visual. If all artwork depends on how the artist uses materials to challenge an observer, colour takes a special importance in the painter’s practice. Painting constantly forces the artist to make choices, acts of acceptance or refusal, sometimes on an irrational basis. Doing art can be so compulsive that working “with … [Read more...]
Space
What typifies my work is the reference to representations of the landscape, of the architecture, of the space, whether inside or outside, spaces surrounding a figure, perhaps an observer. These are subjects that have always been with me and which do not function in opposition. When i make drawings with references to architectural objects, i am satisfied when the lines and … [Read more...]
White
Almost always the surface that i’ll work on is white. Sometimes I moisten it so that the colours that will lay upon it slide better and blend with it. I always want to hide it, to cover it with another colour, but occasionally it comes back and where I once saw colour, I now can only see white. White is where I start and where I sometimes finish. Start over. … [Read more...]
Landscape
The landscape empties but remains full in its own space. In its immensity time has also stopped. Being inside the landscape is like having existed for a very long time, as nooteboom tells us. The room’s pavement is dark and waxed. The edges of each floorboard define parallel lines. It’s dark in here. I can’t see properly anymore. The gaze scarcely focuses the furniture in this … [Read more...]
In the kitchen
The small zinc cups were aligned on the kitchen table and my mother showed me how to grease them. I’d dip my fingers in the fat and then slide slowly along the surface of the cup. I’ve never forgotten those smells and the tactile sensations that are involved in the making of “food things”. Today i’m preparing again these little cups that will make pies, in this case, vegetable … [Read more...]
Venice
The arches of St. Marks’ square paraded under my gaze before my rushed step. It was almost closing time at museu correr and a large selection of francis bacon’s paintings awaited me, in that impressive show in the year of his death. Impressive will always be a relative appreciation. It was so for myself, also because it was the first time i was seeing in person a great number … [Read more...]
Evening
As the afternoon ends and the evening approaches, the shadows and everything else that helps the inaccuracy of the gaze allow another breath of life, propose resuming the dream of a blue sky or a green landscape, of a simple life, of smooth and carefree talks. However, there was a day in which the memory of that midday did not faint, it remained there, reminding him of the … [Read more...]
On a bicycle
I had accelerated my pedal. Gliding in the wind, my head started to empty in the rhythmical pace of the pedalling, in the keeping of my balance and in the sight of the horizon. The tide had still not emptied completely. The clouds became more present and strong. I even felt that I was lifting from the ground. Below me - the dam, the lagoon, sheep, birds - became more distant … [Read more...]
Tide
The space was small, and shortly after, the available floor was completely invaded by the successive sheets of paper that I had watercolored. Then I stopped, waiting for the “low tide” in that sea of wet paper. Later I’d gather the dry colours, altered by secret alchemy of evaporation. … [Read more...]
Gazing inward
What is proposed is more than seeing inside, it is to imagine oneself being inside, as if confined within a surrounding environment of intense painting, isolated and cut off from all conditions exterior to painting itself. … [Read more...]
Lisbon
Seated at the end of the castle wall, once again gazing over Lisbon. I draw: the hand moves in circles. someone arises from my back to observe what i’m doing. I finish in that moment, I fold the drawing’s sheet. My gaze wants to be alone with itself. … [Read more...]
Aroma
There are moments; I don’t even need to close my eyes. Moments in which an aroma reminds me of a house, a corner of a living room, a side of a table, the roundness of a bowl, the wrinkling of a bed. I don’t know if I’m able to do the inverse path: lay a colour in a painting and when looking at it, thinking of smells that come or have resulted of sensations of joy or sadness, … [Read more...]
At home
One day the gaze recalls the day before. when the hand gently fondles the door’s post, the tabletop, the edge of the bed. Thinking about other doors, tables, bedrooms, houses, the gaze roams, searching for other moments. The repetition of the gesture certifies the continuous gaze. … [Read more...]
The full suitcase
An interior is drawn, the interior of a palace, of a house, walls - some made of ice, others not, a cave, a path in a canyon, an exploding window, staircases that draw back and come forward, that sink or elevate, something that falls in the water, a row of columns, a suitcase that opens. … [Read more...]
The sea
The atlantic close to me is the sound of the waves. That constant thundering, soft or loud, in its minimal repetition, lullabies me until I loose awareness of myself. The gaze that has seen far away, that has observed the unreachable horizon, is now close by, rolled into continuously blurred waves, savoring the repeated lines of the surf foam. … [Read more...]
Process
I start by choosing all the colours that the paint manufacturers provide. I lay the respective pots of paint out on my work table, grouping them together according to a possible palette of colours: I establish a scale among the colours that I intend to use first and their opposite colours, not in the optical sense or as a chromatic circle, but by subjective, intuitive … [Read more...]
The right space
Sometimes there is a non-path, a “wrongness” that I realize during the making of a painting, or even in the moment that I considered it finished. These colours or drawings, that I can’t explain, freely incorporate in the surface of the painting, Appropriating of my space. … [Read more...]
Living in Lisboa
As I think about the cities of my life, I conclude that i’ve either not travelled a lot or that I am a terrible conservative, as I feel intimately connected to my city, Lisboa. I live in Lisboa, in the Graça neighborhood. I’ve always lived there; I was born in the same house that I live in. My studio is close by to my house, and for the majority of times I won’t use transport … [Read more...]
Box of watercolours
I don’t recall when this box of watercolours was given to me. I know that it travels with me since forever. I open it from time to time just to see the small ink blocks wore down by vigorous brush rubbing. I also don’t have the first proofs of its usage – I imagine sheets of paper with an immense mix of drained overlapped colours, because that was what I enjoyed doing, or … [Read more...]
Paint filled shoes
I like to fill my paintings with paint: lots of paint, thick paints. Mixed different colours flowing on the surface of the canvas. Seeking the surprise of a contrast, the intensity of an unexpected rapport on colours side by side. My shoes get painted too. Some flocks of paint fall over them during the studio work. It is as if I am making two paintings at the same time: one … [Read more...]
F.A.Q.
frequently asked questions - a small auto-biography to remember, to think, to do i have trouble with thinking about myself and even more to remember what i have done, where i have been to, who i have spoken to. my memory is one of my biggest issues, because on the one hand i wish to recover certain moments, on the other i feel that in forgetting i undergo the creative … [Read more...]
Left and right hand
With my arms stretched open, the blades that I am holding firmly in my hands touch the two surfaces simultaneously. When one hand scores the paint on one surface, the other hand immediately imitates the gesture on the opposite side. i start again. now it is the right hand which takes up the initiative and the left that responds. in this way the drawing begins to emerge. … [Read more...]
Drawing versus painting
Chronologically, my first works are drawings, but drawings that have a structure similar to painting. they are not the founding drawings/studies for painting neither for any other works. they have nothing to do with the idea of the drawing as a concept. they are drawings that come out directly onto the paper as if they were a painting. i could have started out with drawing … [Read more...]
Being an artist
Art is something that may bring you strange doubts. you have doubts about what it is; you might not even know what it is. in reality, anything can be art: it depends on our attitude towards certain objects or doing certain things. i think it is necessary to have a special talent, not in the sense of something that only a few possess but something that could be awake in each … [Read more...]
Filipa Oliveira, curatorial text
Pedro Calapez is one of the most successful painters in the current national art scene. It would be easy to keep his course without modifying his work. However, Calapez inhabits painting with a sense of crisis, constantly destabilizes his own practice introducing new challenges, new ways of painting, new media. On one of my first visits to his atelier, I noticed a couple of … [Read more...]
J. S. Cardoso, “Life in the small space between things”
Interview by João Sousa Cardoso April 1999 Published in nº 4 of the magazine “desvio 256” Calapez is a painter who paints. Paintings you would hang on your walls; an artist who produces concrete objects for the contemplation of the viewer. He is guided by an intimate, individual and incessant dialogue with the quality of his materials and stands for the currency of an … [Read more...]
