Victor Milheirão
Portugal

Victor Milheirão

Victor Milheirão was born in Ovar, but grew up in Lisbon. At the age of 24, he studied painting and ended up finishing the course as one of the best students at the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes de Lisboa, in the years from 1967. He dedicated his life to the plastic arts and graphic restoration. He was the last to leave the Gulbenkian graphic restoration workshop, where he worked for 34 years.

Throughout his artistic career, he developed a particular pedigree for the representation of the bicornuate hat, a figure eternally present in his works, thus becoming a fundamental element in his works. compositions.

He worked with various materials such as spray, Indian ink, watercolor, pastel, acrylics. He has always felt a strong affinity and inspiration in Picasso's work and there is another brushstroke that shows this taste. In the titles of your works, you will find: The influence of readings, of the semantics of Aquilino Ribeiro, of Camilo Castelo Branco, is present. «I really like the expressions they use, I like recovering these ruins of speech».

He began his journey at the Gulbenkian museum as a restoration technician, and became responsible for the department of restoration of graphic documents (in the recovery of graphic pieces such as Japanese prints and European books, Islamic books, Western books on parchment, Japanese engravings.), leaving after 34 years. Without ever stopping painting, drawing, seeing exhibitions.

In 1980, he enrolled in the museum conservator course at the National Museum of Ancient Art. He taught the restoration course at the Ipiranga Museum in São Paulo for a month. He was in Japan and Canada; taking and bringing pieces of painting from museums. He wrote about Amadeo Sousa Cardoso's drawing technique, which was never published by Gulbenkian. 

He created laparotos, a comic strip featuring bunnies that performed mischief, for the magazine Fungagá da Bicharada, directed by Júlio Isidro.

He published cartoons in Parada da Paródia, in the Diário de Lisboa. In the 1990s, he won a free humor prize at the Oeiras National Caricature Show with a drawing in which he had Van Gogh painting the bed in the famous room where he lived.

He taught drawing and painting at the Escola e Artes Decorativas António Arroio for two years.

Currently, in the city center, at Praça da República, in front of the city center. Ovar Municipal Council, works by him can be seen. «Bicórnios em Parada» was the name of Victor Milheirão's third exhibition in Ovar, his homeland. Several of the painter's paintings were on display at the Júlio Dinis Museum. In 1983, he exhibited drawings and watercolors at the Cooperativa Cultural Sem Margem in Ovar and 17 years later, in 2000, he returned to the museum. city for another exhibition, this time at the municipal library, when he launches the book Bicórnios.

Your work is here. also represented with humorous drawings in a space dedicated to cartoons in Basel,  in Switzerland.