António Charrua

António Charrua developed a practice spanning painting, printmaking, sculpture, tapestry and stained glass. His abstract vocabulary drew on European and American expressionist investigations without restricting itself to a single material. Following unfinished architectural studies in Lisbon, he held his first solo exhibition in Porto in 1953. Évora became an important setting for his exchanges with artists and writers.

Contact with Charrua helped awaken Álvaro Lapa’s interest in art. From the 1970s, stays and exhibitions in Switzerland extended this network beyond Portugal. The Gulbenkian collection holds Terra Trabalhada and Grande X II, among other works marking the course of his painting. This movement between disciplines, generations and countries gives his abstraction a distinctive position within Portuguese art of the postwar period.

Works recorded at auction