Fernando Lemos (José Fernandes de Lemos) Painter, sketching artist, photographer and poet, born in Lisbon in 1926. He attends the António Arroio School of Decorative Arts, starting out his career in advertising and industrial design. He then approaches surrealism, participating, in 1952, in the group exhibition with F. Azevedo and M. Vespeira, that brought scandal. In 1953, he leaves for Brazil, there developing the greater part of his career as a visual artist, collaborating as an illustrator with magazines and newspapers of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. He participated in several São Paulo Biennale's, in 1957 he divided the Drawing prize with Wega Nery. Two years later, he is responsible for the set-up design of the event. In 1965, in the VIII edition, he shows a special room. He uses photography since the 40's, evolving from a figurative register (portraits) leading the artist to the margins of surrealistic composition such as overlapping of images. He participated in 1992 in the “Mois de la Photo” in Paris, and in 1994 a retrospective show of his photographic works is held at the Modern Cart Centre of the Gulbenkian Foundation, in Lisbon. Selection of recent photo exhibitions: : “Portraits of whom?”, Instituto Camões, São Paulo, Lisbon, 2002; “À Luz da Sombra / À Sombra da Luz”, Pinacoteca do Estado de S.Paulo, 2004, Museu Nacional de Belas Artes – Rio de Janeiro, 2005. He was awarded the National Prize by Centro Portuguese de Fotografia, Oporto, 2001.
