Alfredo Queiroz Ribeiro 1939-1974 Sculptor and university teacher |
Alfredo Queiroz Ribeiro was born in Beira, Mozambique, in 1939.
He was very young when he settled in Porto to study Sculpture at the Porto School of Fine Arts, between 1959 and 1964, as well as ceramics and painting, and participated in the Novíssimos exhibitions and in other exhibitions at the ESBAP, Cooperativa Árvore and Évora Art Centre.
1964 marks his debut in solo exhibitions at the Divulgação Gallery, in Porto, where he won the "Mestre Manuel Pereira Sculpture Prize", awarded by the National Secretariat of Information.
In 1965, he once again exhibited his work in Lisbon and Porto, but in April he interrupted all artistic activities as he was drafted into military service (two years in mainland Portugal and two in Guinea).
After going back to civilian life, he had a solo exhibition in Alvarez Gallery, in Porto, in 1969, and was part of a group exhibition in Quadrante Gallery, in Lisbon.
From 1970 to 1972, he pursued his Sculpture studies at the Saint Martin’s School of Art in London, as a fellow of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. During the years spent in London, he began to use prefabricated materials and objects trouvés, which he used in simple and meaningless assemblages.
He moved to Liverpool in 1974, where he worked as Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sculpture of the Liverpool Polytechnic. During this new phase, he produced very precise geometric abstract sculptures, typical of industrial technology, and also serigraphies and lithographs. He exhibited his work at the Liverpool Academy Gallery and Bluecoat Gallery, as well as in Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in Lisbon.
In 1974, he repeated the Gulbenkian exhibition at Cooperativa Árvore, in Porto, and founded the ACRE Group with his colleagues Clara Menéres and Lima de Carvalho.
Alfredo Queiroz Ribeiro participated in the International Art Meetings organized by the Alvarez Gallery and produced works for public and private entities. His work is part of national and foreign art collections.
He was a pioneering artist in the renovation of Portuguese sculpture and a member of the British and American post-movement. He died in Porto in 1974, without having had time to consolidate a very promising career.
(Universidade Digital / Gestão de Informação, 2010)