Manuel Botelho

Botelho was born in Lisbon, Portugal.

He studied architecture at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts from 1968–76, and painting at the Byam Shaw School of Art (1983–85) and the Slade School of Fine Art (1985–87), London. In 2005 he held a retrospective exhibition at the Modern Art Centre, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon.

Botelho's work has always been concerned with the socio-political realm, and his 1969 collages focused on the May 1968 Paris uprisings and the Vietnam War.

His early 1980s works were often closely linked to his own life, speaking of loss or separation. Simultaneously, he searched for his roots in the past, and he found himself reflecting on how the present seemed haunted by the memories of 41 years of oppression (Salazar and Caetano's dictatorship – 1933–1974).

In 2006 he "resorted to a new medium, photography, to build a body of work that nevertheless reflects the main characteristics of his practice: examination of historical issues, references to the Western pictorial tradition, and figuration as a stylistic signature".

His 2011–12 works include large-scale 3D pieces made with campaign tent cloths and the sound installation "Cartas de Amor e Saudade (Letters of Love and Longing), based on the letters exchanged between a soldier in Portuguese Guinea and his girlfriend in Lisbon: "sounding like a radio soap opera the text locates us in time and in space, showing us the dimension of feelings: Portugal and Guinea, nineteen-sixties and Colonial War, love and death, jealousy and hope".