Rocha de Sousa

João Manuel Rocha de Sousa was born in Silves in 1938 and died in Lisbon in 2021. A visual artist, he taught at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts from 1964 to 1997.

He was linked to the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes, which he represented on the organising committee of the Portuguese representation at the 12th São Paulo Biennial in 1973, and was a member of the Portuguese Section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). He wrote the catalogue text on Justino Alves for the exhibition Alves held with Pedro Chorão at the Centre Culturel Portugais in Paris in 1978.

His work was shown in exhibitions such as "Pintura Portuguesa de Hoje. Abstractos e Neofigurativos", which toured Spain and Portugal in 1973, and in several exhibitions of contemporary Portuguese printmaking, among them "Gravure Portugaise Contemporaine, 1970-1975" in France, Poland and Norway, "20 Anos de Gravura" at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1976, the 1st National Printmaking Exhibition at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in 1977, and "Portuguese Contemporary Engravings, 1970-1980", which toured Finland, Ireland and the United States between 1984 and 1986. He also took part in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s 3rd Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1986, in "As Últimas Décadas" at the Luís de Camões Museum in Macau in 1987, and in "Anos 70. Atravessar Fronteiras" at the Modern Art Centre in 2009-2010.

He is represented in the collection of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Modern Art Centre, with works such as "Emigrantes" (1963), "Por uma Civilização" (1974) and "Geometria para os Desastres Principais II" (1985).