It is at the UNESCO Center in Beja, to 29/12 the exhibition “Teresa Sousa – Fragments of a brief journey” composed of engraving, painting and drawing.
Despite having distinguished herself as an engraver and being a pioneer of modern engraving in Portugal,, with frequent participation in exhibitions at the time of his artistic activity, at home and abroad, Teresa Sousa is today an artist almost only known to scholars of Portuguese modern art.
Teresa Sousa was born in Lisbon, in 1928. In 1954, completed the Superior Painting Course at the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes de Lisboa with maximum marks.
In 1955-56 was a scholarship holder in Paris, where he studied engraving at the charismatic Atelier 17, under the guidance of Stanley Hayter, a major reference for 20th century engraving. Learning in the Atelier 17 was decisive for the recognition of his recording work.
The few informative elements about Teresa Sousa that can be found in the specialized literature, are mostly related to the engraving prize awarded to him at the 1st Visual Arts Exhibition of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (1957), with the Portico Gallery, of which she was the founder and promoter; and as a recording artist in the early years of Gravura – Portuguese Engravers Cooperative Society.
At the time he developed his activity as a visual artist (1955 – 1961), Teresa Sousa was quite prolific, recognized and awarded, but premature death, with just 33 years just turned, interrupted a career that looked promising. He left a lot of work unfinished and a lot of studies, particularly for engravings, for tapestries, and for mosaics. With the exception of some engravings, his work has never been studied.
At the Teresa Sousa exhibition – Fragments of a brief journey, an anthological retrospective of the artist's work is presented, which constitutes, since always, the first exhibition in which works are exposed to the public in all the main languages in which they were expressed: engraving, painting, drawing, a tapestry made by the Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre based on a drawing by the artist is also on display..
