Gonçalo Pena

Biography

Gonçalo Pena was born in 1967. In 2012, he moved to Bergen, Norway where he lived until 2014. He now lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal.
He graduated in Painting in the fine-arts academy of Lisbon in 1993. He has a Masters Degree in Communication Sciences by the UNL (Lisbon) with a thesis centered in design issues.

He taught painting and drawing at ESAD, School for Arts and Design in Caldas da Rainha (Portugal) from 1995 until 2005 when he decided to devote himself exclusively to his artistic practice, to painting and illustration. He has been working as an illustrator since 1993, with work appearing in important portuguese newspapers and magazines (Independente, Público, Ler, Egoísta, Livros). He has kept working on other media alongside painting, like cinema (Super8) and performance art. He wrote and published several essays.

In June 2014 it was published by Mousse Publishers and edited by João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva, a book with a collection of Gonçalo’s drawings that were part of the exhibition Monkey Trip at Galleria Zero, in Milan, Italy.

Some of his most important solo exhibitions are: : “Sauvage Européen”, in Sociedad Anonima – Arte Contemporaneo Europeo (Madrid, Spainl, 2015), “Sauvage Européen”, in Galeria Graça Brandão (Lisbon, Portugal, 2015),  Monkey Trip, at Galleria Zero…(Milan, Italy, 2014), Monkey Trip, at Galeria Graça Brandão (Lisbon, Portugal, 2012), Atol Deuses Inúteis, at ZDB (Lisbon, Portugal, 2012), Garden Cities of Tomorrow, at Galería Fúcares (Madrid, Spain, 2010), Salão de Outono, at Galeria Graça Brandão (Lisbon, Portugal, 2008) e Wi(e)der die Malerei, at Rosalux (Berlin, Germany, 2007).