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Lourdes Castro
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Grand Herbier d'Ombres
by Lourdes Castro
Completed in Madeira during the summer of 1972, Grand herbier d'ombres [Large herbarium of shadows], one of the artist Lourdes Castro’s seminal works, is comprised of a collection of silhouettes of about 100 botanical species directly captured in the sun on heliographic paper. Herbariums are considered to be of enormous scientific value, not only for the study of taxonomy but also as depositaries of botanical specimens collected in the course of research intended for the documentation, classification and preservation of the floral diversity of a specific region, or country. What Lourdes Castro here created, essentially poetic, symbolic and even spiritual in nature, was an authentic visual encyclopedia in the form of a book-catalogue, with labels written by hand identifying a vast collection of botanical species from the artist’s island birthplace – “The Floating Garden in the Atlantic” – as an affective record alluding to the ephemeral, fleeting nature of time and the brevity of life.
Inês Grosso and Rosa Lleó
Curators of Um oásis ao entardecer – a commemorative overview of the EDP Foundation awards’ last twenty years
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Born in 1930, Lourdes Castro lives and works in Funchal, Ilha da Madeira. She was the co-founder of the “KWY” magazine (1958 to 1964), with René Bertholo, in Paris, where she lived for 25 years. In 1961, she begins the production of assemblages of painted objects. In the following year, she introduces the series of shadows in silk print, throughout projected shadows and people silhouettes on canvas. In 1964, she develops her first Plexiglas works, which gradually straddle to lying shadows, embroidered in bed sheets (1968) and to the shadows theatre, or moving shadows (1973). In 2000 she received the first EDP Foundation Art Grand Prize.
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Um oásis ao entardecer is presented at maat on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the EDP Foundation Awards. An exhibition with works by Álvaro Lapa, Ana Jotta, Ana Santos, André Romão, Artur Barrio, Carlos Bunga, Claire de Santa Coloma, Diana Policarpo, Eduardo Batarda, Gabriel Abrantes, Joana Vasconcelos, João Leonardo, João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva, Jorge Molder, Leonor Antunes, Lourdes Castro, Mariana Silva, Mário Cesariny, Priscila Fernandes and Vasco Araújo; curated by Inês Grosso and Rosa Lleó; with scenography by Diogo Passarinho and exhibition graphic design by Atlas Projectos.
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