Noronha da Costa

Luís Noronha da Costa was born in Lisbon in 1942 and died in the same city in 2020. A painter, filmmaker and architect, he trained at the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes de Lisboa and held his first solo exhibition in 1962. The investigation of the image and of perception runs through his career, establishing a constant relationship between artistic creation and reflection on the act of seeing.

In the 1960s, he explored transparency and the superimposition of images through collage, later moving on to the construction of objects with mirrors and glass. The reflections, duplications and optical effects of these works questioned the position of the viewer and the relationship between real space and represented space. This research would accompany the development of his painting and of the experiments he carried out in cinema.

The use of the spray gun became one of the most recognisable features of his work. Projecting the paint allowed him to create images with blurred contours, in which light takes part in the dissolution of forms. The painting presents itself as a screen, a surface that mediates the relationship between the image and the person looking at it. References to art history, photography, cinema and visual culture intersect in compositions that make use of repetition, superimposition and blurring.

In parallel, he was active in experimental cinema and wrote film criticism and theory. The closeness between these two practices was decisive for his artistic thinking. In 1974, he presented work at the Cinémathèque française in Paris, at the invitation of Henri Langlois.

He represented Portugal at the São Paulo Biennial in 1969 and at the Venice Biennale in 1970 and 1978, and also took part in the exhibition Alternativa Zero in 1977. Among the main presentations of his work are the retrospective at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in 1983 and the exhibition Noronha da Costa Revisitado, 1965-1983, at the Centro Cultural de Belém in 2003. In 2014, Galeria São Mamede presented the exhibition Uma Homenagem.

He received the Grande Prémio Soquil in 1969, the European Parliament's European Painting Prize in 1999 and the AICA/MC Prize in 2003. His work is part of numerous public and private collections, including those of the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, the Fundação de Serralves and the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea (Museu do Chiado).