Amaro della Quercia

Amaro della Quercia was born in Vila Nova de Famalicão in 1982. He trained in Fine Art at AR.CO, Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual, in Lisbon, in 2012, and graduated in Art History from the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto in 2020.

Drawing occupies a central place in his artistic practice. His work focuses above all on the representation of the human figure, exploring themes that move between the sacred and the everyday, often brought together in unconventional contexts. Drawing on techniques and materials inspired by traditional practices, but also on experimental approaches, he develops a body of work in which religious, symbolic and contemporary references coexist.

He lived in Italy for five years, a period during which he held various solo and group exhibitions, among them Sacro & Profano (Montefano, 2015), I Volti della Parola (Cefalù, 2015), A Sua Immagine (Camerano, 2016), Alzati e Cammina (Rome, 2016), Misericordia Voglio e Non Sacrificio (Palermo, 2016), Fissare lo Sguardo (Montefano, 2017), Oltre la Figura (Montecassiano, 2019), Tipi, Cittadini Nomadi (Montefano, 2022) and Impronte di Pace (Cefalù, 2023).

In 2022 he presented the exhibition EXXXplicit at the Galerie Mooiman Male-Art in Groningen, the Netherlands, and took part in the Osten Biennial of Drawing in Skopje, North Macedonia. In 2023 he held the exhibition Stupidario Religioso at the Feira de Arte e Antiguidades de Lisboa and the retrospective Decennale Amaro della Quercia at the Biblioteca San Filippo, part of the Centro Studi Biblici G. Vannucci, in Italy. That same year he took part in the Larnaca Biennale, in Cyprus.

Among his most recent group exhibitions are Camões 500 Anos: Exposição Universal de Matriz Portuguesa (2024), his participation as guest artist in the 25.ª Exposição de Ex-Alunos e Professores das Escolas António Arroio e Soares dos Reis at the Fundação Manuel António da Mota, Porto (2024), and Chambre D’Amis at the Galeria Quintessens, Utrecht, the Netherlands (2024).

He has also worked as an illustrator for books, newspapers and magazines.

In 2023 he was a finalist at the Osten Biennial of Drawing in Skopje. His work Nómadas received the Osten Prize and entered the collection of the National Gallery of North Macedonia.