A leading figure in Portuguese art and one of the great names of Portuguese and European Surrealism, Artur do Cruzeiro Seixas was born in 1920 in Amadora.

Throughout his long artistic career, he went through an Expressionist phase, a Neo-Realist phase, and another—which began in the late 1940s and lasted longer—during which he was part of the Portuguese Surrealist movement, alongside Mário Cesariny, Carlos Calvet, António Maria Lisboa, Pedro Oom, and Mário Henrique Leiria.

He was one of its pioneers and is currently considered one of its leading figures, given that the fantastic surrealism evident in his work was primarily inspired by the work of the artist De Chirico. He is the author of a vast body of work in the fields of drawing and painting, as well as poetry, sculpture, and sculptural objects. In 1952, he moved to Angola, where he held several solo exhibitions and undertook projects in the field of museology. In 1964, fleeing the colonial war that was raging at the time, he decided to embark on a journey through Europe.

Throughout his career, he has held numerous solo and group exhibitions at major museums and galleries in Portugal and abroad, and has received various awards and honors. In October 2012, the Portuguese Society of Authors awarded him the Medal of Honor in recognition of his long and distinguished artistic career as a painter and poet.

In October 2020, he was awarded the Medal of Cultural Merit by the Minister of Culture—“an institutional recognition, but also a personal acknowledgment from someone who joins the many who admire him and who recognize in him a vision that has always seen farther and deeper.” He died on November 8, 2020, in Lisbon, just before his 100th birthday.

Text: Porto Editora