Born in Lisbon in 1923. He studied at the António Arroio School and the Academia da Grande Chaumière in Paris, where he came into contact with artists from the DADA group and surrealists.
His journey also includes musical learning with Fernando Lopes Graça. He went through neo realism and in 1947 he created one of his first avant-garde plastic experiments - a collage on the figure of General de Gaulle – which already showed a rupture, also evident in the preponderant action he played in the formation of the Grupo Surrealista de Lisboa and which he would later abandon to form another group, Os Surrealistas, with Pedro Oom, Cruzeiro Seixas, António Maria Lisboa, Carlos Calvet, among others.
He received a scholarship from the FCG in Paris, London and Lausanne in 1964/65. His artistic work deals with both literature and the plastic arts. In 2002 he was awarded the grand EDP Prize for Fine Arts and, in 2005, the Grã-Cruz of the Order of Freedom.