João Cutileiro
AVAILABLE
Title: Nú feminino
Technique: Painted porcelain plate
Diameter: 27 cm
Edition: 100, numbered and signed by master Cutileiro, with acrylic support
Reference: C0001
RRP: 210 €
AVAILABLE:
Technique: silkscreen
Dimensions: 69 x 49 cm
Edition: 150 signed and numbered copies
Copy: 99
Year: 1986
Reference: C0002
RRP: €250 w/ frame
1992-1993: He holds more exhibitions in Brussels , Luxembourg , Évora , Guimarães , Lagos , Almancil and Lisbon. In the following years, he made more exhibitions.
Honorary Doctorate by the University of Évora
2017: Honorary Doctorate from Universidade Nova de Lisboa
About Master Cutileiro
Image Source: Wikipedia
1937: João Pires Cutileiro was born in Lisbon, on the 26th of June, and became a sculptor.
In Lisbon, the Cutileiro family lived on Av. Elias Garcia, in a house famous for being frequented by the so-called intelligentsia , a group of personalities of the time. António Pedro, one of them, brought him to draw in his studio, in 1946. During the two years he worked there, he was strongly influenced by Surrealism .
1949-1951: Starts to frequent Jorge Barradas ' studio where he performs modeling and painting works, in addition to ceramic glazes. Dissatisfied, he moves to António Duarte 's studio, where he works as a construction site assistant, volunteer, for two years. There he came into contact with stone, as his job was to enlarge the master mason's models, put them in plaster and, for the latter, metamorphose them into marble. In 1951, at the age of 14, he presented his first solo exhibition in Reguengos de Monsaraz , in a sewing machine shop, showing sculptures, paintings , watercolors and ceramics.
He completes high school at Colégio Valsassina and it is during this period that he presents his political ideology, when he joins the youth organization of the Movement for Democratic Unity (MUD). Years later, in 1960, he again assumed a political position by joining the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP). This passage through the PCP as a militant was short, as the "cell" to which he belonged broke up and contacts were lost.
On his way to Kabul , to visit his father who would stay there for a year, he passed through Florence , where he was enchanted by the work of Michelangelo . He then confirmed a trend that had existed since he was six years old, when he sculpted a nativity scene, the tendency towards sculpture. On his return to Lisbon, he enrolled at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts (ESBAL), being a student of Leopoldo de Almeida .
1953-1954: He didn't spend more than two years at ESBAL to realize that in Portugal the only material considered useful was bronze and research, experimentalism and creativity were held back. He leaves the country under the influence of Paula Rego , who introduces him to the Slade School of Art in London. At that school, which he attended between 1955 and 1959, he developed his skills with his master sculptor Reg Butler and in the end received three awards: composition, figure and head.
When he started to use electric machines to carry out the work, he dedicated himself to marble and the figures, landscapes, boxes and trees appeared.
1961: In the following ten years, he had five exhibitions in Lisbon and one in Porto .
1970: Returns to Portugal and settles in Lagos . It is there that he performs his most controversial work, D. Sebastião, erected in the same city.
This work confronted the academicism of the Estado Novo and received strong criticism and says, in an ironic phrase, that he gave up on sculpture, becoming just «a maker of objects destined for the intellectual bourgeoisie of the West», astonishing the sculptors for, according to him, this is the same function of a sculptor, that of creator of decorative pieces. This phrase is also intended to belittle the criticism of those who thought he was a lesser sculptor.
1971: He won an honorable mention at the Soquil Prize and, five years later, his sculptures and mosaics were exhibited in Wuppertal , Germany , followed by exhibitions in Évora ( 1979 , 80 and 81 ) and, in 1980, his work back to Germany, but Dortmund . That same year, he exhibited in Washington, DC and at the National Society of Fine Arts. The following year, he participated in the Stone Sculpture Symposium, in Évora, and in an exhibition at the Jones Gallery , in New York .
1983: A3 de Agosto is awarded the rank of Officer of the Military Order of Sant'Iago da Espada .
His Alentejo ribs led him to move to Évora in 1985 and there, in his house, a large part of his range of works is on display.
The Cutler's Girls, ironically called, are probably his most famous theme and won him (and are worth) the most distinguished glory and money, but also contempt on the part of some.
nineteen ninety: He prepares an exhibition that is presented as a retrospective of his art, in Lisbon , at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation . This resulted in the bitterness of seeing only part of his work shown and that he would not be able to gather all his works at once.
1988: He held exhibitions in Almancil , Macau and Lisbon and, in the following year, he had new exhibitions in Almancil and in the capital of Portugal.
2021: He died in Lisbon at the age of 83.
If you enjoyed João Cutileiro’s work, you might also be in Eduardo Alarcão, Carlos Barroco and Justino Alves’s work.