Helena Almeida facts for kids
Helena Almeida (born April 11, 1934 – died September 25, 2018) was a famous Portuguese artist. She was known for her unique work that combined photography, performance art, body art, painting, and drawing.
Helena Almeida showed her art at the Venice Biennale in 1982 and 2005. This is a very important art exhibition. She also had her own special show at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017.
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Early Life and Family
Helena Almeida was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1934. Her father, Leopoldo de Almeida, was a well-known sculptor.
In 1955, Helena finished her painting studies at the School of Fine Arts in Lisbon. She later married an architect named Artur Rosa. Their daughter, Joana Rosa, also became an artist. After some years of raising her family, Helena received a scholarship in 1964 and moved to Paris to continue her artistic journey.
Helena Almeida's Artworks
Helena Almeida first showed her art in 1967. In this early show, she started using three-dimensional parts in her work. She often returned to this idea in her later pieces. She wanted her art to go beyond a flat canvas and really grab the viewer's attention.
Starting in 1969, Helena began to focus on showing herself in her art. She created a black and white photograph of herself wearing a canvas, with her arms spread out. This photo showed her belief that "her work was her body, and her body was her work." This idea became a big part of her art.
Helena always included a woman's image in her work, but she changed it into a painting or drawing. She didn't make traditional self-portraits. Instead, she would say, "I am the canvas." Her art was like a mix of a performance and body art, where her own body was the main focus.
In the early 1970s, Helena went back to making three-dimensional drawings. She used horsehair threads that seemed to jump right off the page. She called this style "painting outwards."
By 1975, Helena Almeida was bringing together three different art forms: photography, painting, and drawing. The horsehair threads represented drawing. She used only a few colors for painting, usually blue, red, or black. Photography helped tell the story of her art. Her work explored many areas, from drawing to cinema, and from paintings to sculpture.
You can find Helena Almeida's art in famous museums around the world. These include the Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Museu d'art Contemporani de Barcelona. Her art is also shown in her home city of Lisbon.
Later Life and Passing
Helena Almeida passed away at her home in Sintra, near Lisbon, on September 25, 2018. She was 84 years old.
Major Exhibitions
Helena Almeida's work has been shown in many important exhibitions, including:
- Galeria Buchholz, Lisbon (1967)
- Venice Biennial (1982 and 2005)
- Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela (2000)
- Sydney Biennial (2004)
- The Drawing Centre, New York (2004)
- Fundación Telefónica, Madrid (2009)
- Helena Almeida: Inside Me, Kettles Yard, Cambridge, UK (2009)
- Helena Almeida: My Work is My Body, My Body is My Work, Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal (2015/2016)
- Work Is Never Finished, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (2017)
- Helena Almeida, Inhabited Canvas, Tate Modern, London (2018)
See also
In Spanish: Helena Almeida para niños
