Helena Almeida is the daughter of the sculptor Leopoldo de Almeida (1898-1975). She graduated in Painting from the Lisbon Fine Arts School in 1955 and would soon become one of the leading figures of the main group initiatives on the Portuguese art scene. Her first solo show was at the Buchholz Gallery in Lisbon in 1967. Her refusal to see painting conventionally and her need to explore the limits of the canvas could already be seen. This marked the start of a fruitful questioning of the medium based on photographic self-representation, in which she worked closely with her husband, the sculptor and architect Artur Rosa, who took the photographs. Almeida used drawing to plan that representation, in which visual media and performance combine but neither of them predominates. That is the case of her series entitled Inhabited Painting in the 1970s, where she makes viewers reflect upon fractures separating reality and representation and their place on a virtual plane in the postmodern world.
Helena Almeida took part in the São Paulo Biennial (1979), but it was not until the 1980s that her work received institutional recognition, with solo exhibitions such as the one at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon, 1983 and 1987). She represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale (1982) and exhibited at the Serralves Foundation (Oporto, Portugal, 1995). However, she did not achieve international acclaim until her work was shown in Spain at the Casa de América in Madrid, as the part of the ARCO event featuring Portuguese art in 1998. She then went on to exhibit at leading centres internationally, including the Centre for Contemporary Art of Galicia (Santiago de Compostela, 2000), the Ibero-American Museum of Contemporary Art (Badajoz, 2000), the Telefónica Foundation, (Madrid, 2008), the Belém Cultural Centre Foundation (Lisbon, 2004), the Serralves Foundation (Oporto, Portugal, 2015), the Jeu de Paume Gallery (Paris, 2016) and the WIELS Contemporary Art Centre (Brussels, 2015-2016). Her work was also shown at the Sydney Biennial (2004) and the Venice Biennale (2005).
Helena Almeida is the daughter of the sculptor Leopoldo de Almeida (1898-1975). She graduated in Painting from the Lisbon Fine Arts School in 1955 and would soon become one of the leading figures of the main group initiatives on the Portuguese art scene. Her first solo show was at the Buchholz Gallery in Lisbon in 1967. Her refusal to see painting conventionally and her need to explore the limits of the canvas could already be seen. This marked the start of a fruitful questioning of the medium based on photographic self-representation, in which she worked closely with her husband, the sculptor and architect Artur Rosa, who took the photographs. Almeida used drawing to plan that representation, in which visual media and performance combine but neither of them predominates. That is the case of her series entitled Inhabited Painting in the 1970s, where she makes viewers reflect upon fractures separating reality and representation and their place on a virtual plane in the postmodern world.
Helena Almeida took part in the São Paulo Biennial (1979), but it was not until the 1980s that her work received institutional recognition, with solo exhibitions such as the one at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon, 1983 and 1987). She represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale (1982) and exhibited at the Serralves Foundation (Oporto, Portugal, 1995). However, she did not achieve international acclaim until her work was shown in Spain at the Casa de América in Madrid, as the part of the ARCO event featuring Portuguese art in 1998. She then went on to exhibit at leading centres internationally, including the Centre for Contemporary Art of Galicia (Santiago de Compostela, 2000), the Ibero-American Museum of Contemporary Art (Badajoz, 2000), the Telefónica Foundation, (Madrid, 2008), the Belém Cultural Centre Foundation (Lisbon, 2004), the Serralves Foundation (Oporto, Portugal, 2015), the Jeu de Paume Gallery (Paris, 2016) and the WIELS Contemporary Art Centre (Brussels, 2015-2016). Her work was also shown at the Sydney Biennial (2004) and the Venice Biennale (2005).