Henrique Ruivo

(Portuguese– Borba, (1935-2020)

Boato (Rumor)
Graphic work and paintings
April 20th –  May 18th 2024

This year we celebrate April 25th and 50 years since the beginning of democratic life in our country. The exhibition Boato (Rumor), by Henrique Ruivo, is part of the celebrations of this founding moment, at Tinta nos Nervos.

Born during the dictatorship, in Alentejo, Henrique Ruivo (1935-2020) gave voice in his graphic and visual work to the fight for freedom, resistance and the aspiration for better days.

The works gathered here date mainly from the 1970s, with a particular focus on the years after the revolution, when painting and graphic work became contaminated, influenced and created territories of common reading and research, beyond disciplinary specificities and the contexts for which they were produced.

Graphic projects carried out in different contexts are shown (from artistic research to intervention, to protest) and in different media - Illustration, Political Cartoon, Caricature, Graphic proposals for Newspapers, Magazines, Books (covers for multiple publishers), Stickers, Covers of records, posters, screen prints, painting. Most of the original drawings are unpublished, many produced as part of his active participation in the writing and composition of the Seara Nova magazine, and the paintings and sculptures were rarely seen after their original exhibition.

In an authorial speech in which humor is almost always a touchstone, satire and fiercer criticism always go hand in hand with an overflowing joy of being able to participate in the days of the revolution.

The earliest work is the self-published publication O Cacete, from 1969, which shows original drawings and zin engraving matrices. Printed in Rome, where the artist lived in exile from 1962 to 1974, the first issue of the newspaper had a circulation of hundreds of copies, distributed clandestinely by various groups of anti-fascist resistance in Italy, France, England, Algeria and Portugal.

Civically and politically committed, Henrique Ruivo is an artist committed to the cause of freedom (against censorship, against repression), first in clandestine actions and in various initiatives, in the years after April 1974, enthusiastically integrating many cultural actions from the M.F.A. (Armed Forces Movement). He said in an interview in 1968 that “Artistic elaboration must be carried out in complete freedom. The possibility of experience and language must be total. Only in this way will art be enriched with discoveries and escape sterile academicism. And this is also how it will fulfill its revolutionary function. The fact that artistic creation must be free and autonomous does not exempt the artist from his struggle, as a politician, in the society in which he lives.”

A happy holidays card with a caricature of Oliveira Salazar (sent to Portugal inside a cake to be distributed in secret), graphics for the Patriotic Front for National Liberation or for the Relief Commission for Political Prisoners; The 1975 calendar, posters and collective mural paintings created across the country are some examples of these simmering moments of resistance, combat and utopia.

In addition to constant attention to the Portuguese reality, Henrique Ruivo assiduously responds to collaborations requested from Portugal, for the design of various graphic materials, especially for publishers for which he created book covers, illustrations or graphic compositions. First in Rome, then in Portugal, after returning in 1974. Bertrand, Iniciativas Editoriais, Prelo or Seara Nova are some of the publishers with which he worked.

For the exhibition, books with covers by him were selected, many in visual harmony with what he had been developing in painting since the early 70s; one album, among several, for which he prepared the cover; children's books for which he created covers and illustrations and two screen-printed pieces that were included in collective projects:

Mãos (Hands), from 1971-72, an image of resistance that seems to emerge from an excerpt from a poem by Manuel Alegre, was published by Seara Nova as part of a series of 16 serigraphic posters created by artists such as António Charrua, Rogério Ribeiro, Jorge Vieira or Espiga Pinto, among others.

Catarina Eufémia, from 1974, was part of the engraving albumPortogallo 1973, done in Rome, with the collaboration of Italian and Latin American anti-fascist artists in support of the recently formed Portuguese union Intersindical and the struggle and protection of Portuguese workers.

O Boato (Rumor), from 1975, gives the exhibition its name. A work of revolutionary resistance alluded to the figure created by Quito that appeals to the silent majority to speakout and embody the need to maintain a constant state of alert in relation to what could threaten or compromise the freedom achieved. With a powerful design, it captured the attention through its recognizable figuration, the use of archetypal elements (the capitalist, the earwig, the snake), the clear message (the fight against potentially corrosive fake news) and an effective chromatic solution of complementary colors. Alongside the poster Boato - which was published in various formats and a pair of posters by other artists in the MFA's cultural promotion and civic action campaigns -, the original sketches are shown for the first time where the artist tested colors and compositional solutions and graphic framing.

Practically contemporary with this piece are the paintings on display. If in the 1960s Henrique Ruivo's works were located at the crossroads between painting and sculpture, with the integration, on the two-dimensional surface of the support, of materials that provoke the stability of the surface and introduce a reading in relief, in the 1970s this intention now takes on a graphic form, through printing on canvas or paper and the use of masks and cutouts. After a deeply dreamlike and poetic series (the Black Series), in which the memory of surrealist devices intersects with the charm of mysterious and fantastic narratives in literature, evocative, for example, of the writings of authors such as Jules Verne, or the restlessness that echoed from oppressive and distressing environments originating from other narratives, Henrique Ruivo recovers, from 1974 onwards, the rough and expressive figuration of the previous decade but now turned into scribbles, very elastic and linear, inscribed in landscapes of intense chromaticism. The narrative constructions are evidently based on collage, whether of images of his authorship or of pre-existing ones, printed and edited for children, which appear here planned in low relief.

Notice the importance of the fascination that Henrique Ruivo always had with "non-erudite" cultures (an approach to a different art, prehistoric, primitive, childish or popular, which reveals interests close to Dubuffet's brute art), will be noted of art historian Fernando Rosa Dias, but now, reinforced by the festive context of the revolution and the rediscovery of a country, its roots and more genuine expressions of identity, after years of absence and exile. An aspect that also extends to the few sculptural scenographic objects created in the decade, with the integration of popular toys into pictorial and sculptural constructions.

From the attentive and astute commentary of the years in which he was a regular contributor to Seara Nova in the mid-seventies, drawings and compositions were born, reproduced in the magazine, of which some originals are now also shown. Some were crossed by some dismay because causes they considered fundamental had disappeared in new contexts (such as Agrarian Reform), others by satire and caricature of new protagonists and political frameworks.

The end of the seventies will be marked, in painting, by the progressive flattening of images, linear, refined, maintaining a very free figurative tendency and narrative appeal, constant expressions of the lover of stories that he has always been.

Henrique Ruivo

(Portuguese Borba, 1935-2020)

Painter, sculptor, illustrator, set designer and teacher.

Portuguese artist born in 1935, in Borba, Alentejo. He lived in Évora until 1952, the year in which he entered the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon. Four years later, he abandoned medicine and enrolled in the Sculpture course at the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes de Lisboa, attending it until 1962, when he left Portugal to settle in Rome. The return took place in 1974, after the 25th of April. He continued to develop artistic activity as a painter, sculptor, illustrator and writer. He passed away in February 2020, in Lisbon where he lived.

Solo exhibitions (selection)

Galeria Latina, Stockholm, 1965
Galeria 111, Lisboa, 1965
Galeria Il Capitello, Roma, 1971
Galeria Interior, Lisboa, 1973
Galeria Zen, Porto, 1974
Galeria Interior, 1977
Galeria Interior, 1978
Galeria Estela Shapiro, Mexico City, 1979
Galeria Ana Isabel, Lisboa 1984
Galeria Miron-Trema, Lisboa, 1993
Casa das Artes, Tavira, 1996
Galeria Reverso, Lisboa, 2001
EDP, Lisboa, 2015
Galeria do Parque, Vila Nova da Barquinha, 2015
Espaço.arte, Campo Maior, 2023
Tinta nos Nervos, Lisboa, 2024

Group exhibitions (selection)

Prémio Guérin Artes Plásticas, Lisboa, 1968
Maias para o 25 de Abril, Galeria São Mamede, Lisboa, 1974
Figuração-Hoje, Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes, Lisboa, 1976
Portugiesische Realisten, nGbK - neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Berlim, 1977
Cultura Portuguesa em Madrid, Madrid,1977
Amor, Galeria Interior, 1978
A Flor, Galeria Ana Isabel, Lisboa, 1983
III Exposição de Artes Plásticas, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa 1986
Azares da Expressão, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa, 1987
Colecção José Augusto França, Museu do Chiado, Lisboa, 1997
Anos 70. Atravessar Fronteiras, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa, 2010
Até as árvores são sonhos – homenagem a Ana Isabel Rodrigues, Galeria Reverso, 2013
Colecção de Arte Manuel Brito, Palácio Anjos, Algés, 2017
60 anos da Galeria 111, Galeria 111, Lisboa, 2024
Pré/Pós - Declinações visuais do 25 de Abril, Museu de Serralves, 2024