Raúl Perez

Raúl Perez was born in Lovelhe, Minho, on 26 April 1944. A painter and illustrator, he held his first solo exhibition in 1972 at Galeria São Mamede in Lisbon, where he showed thirty images from his Diário Onírico.

In 1973 he joined the Grupo Phases in Paris, from which date he took part in various international exhibitions connected with the surrealist movement. Among these are the exhibitions held at the Museu Van Esene in Brussels (1974) and at the Black Swan Gallery in Chicago (1976), the latter as part of the international surrealist show Marvelous Freedom, Vigilance of Desire, as well as the exhibition organised by the magazine Brumes Blondes in Amsterdam (1977).

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s he exhibited regularly in Portugal and abroad, showing his work in venues such as Galeria São Mamede, the Galeria da Junta de Turismo da Costa do Sol in Estoril, Galeria Dois in Porto, Galeria Tempo in Lisbon and the Museu de Bochum in Germany. He also took part in important exhibitions devoted to surrealism, including Três Poetas do Surrealismo: António Maria Lisboa, Pedro Oom e Mário Henrique Leiria, organised by Mário Cesariny at the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon (1981), and O Fantástico na Arte Portuguesa Contemporânea at the Centro de Arte Moderna of the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (1986).

Alongside his exhibition activity, he worked as an illustrator, notably for the Dutch editions of works by Julien Gracq and Fernando Pessoa published by Meulenhoff in Amsterdam.

In the following decades he remained consistently active, taking part in various exhibitions connected with Portuguese surrealism, among them Primeira Exposição do Surrealismo ou Não at Galeria São Mamede (1994), As Mãos São a Paisagem que Nos Olha, with Cruzeiro Seixas, at Galeria São Mamede (2003 and 2004), and O Surrealismo Abrangente: Coleção Particular de Cruzeiro Seixas, shown at several Portuguese institutions.

In 2006 a retrospective exhibition of his work was presented at the Fundação Cupertino de Miranda in Vila Nova de Famalicão. In 2009 he held an important exhibition of painting and drawing at the Museu Coleção Berardo in the Centro Cultural de Belém, returning that same year to Galeria São Mamede for a new solo exhibition.