Helena Almeida

Lisbon, 1934 - Sintra, Portugal, 2018

After studying fine arts in the Portuguese capital, she moved to Paris in 1964, where she became interested in abstraction and photography. Her creative process – simple yet with a strong poetical charge – uses her whole or fragmented body as an object, and eliminates all boundaries between artistic disciplines such as performance, painting and video, with photography as a conjugation of all these expressions.

Her work has been recognised with awards such as Photo España 2003 Prize and the Extremadura Prize of Creation 2008 of the Junta de Extremadura and in 2005 she represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale. Almeida has shown her work at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon, 1983 and 1987), Fundação Serralves (Oporto, 1995), the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (Santiago de Compostela) and the Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo (Badajoz), both in 2000, the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica (Barcelona, 2005) and Fundación Telefónica (Madrid, 2008), among others.

Her work forms part of international collections such as Colecção Berardo (Lisbon), Tate (London), Hara Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo), Contemporary Art Museum of Chicago, Bibliotheque National de France (Paris), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), Es Baluard Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and Fundación Helga de Alvear (Cáceres), among others.

E.B.

Works in the collection