Select Works by Jorge Queiroz
Jorge Queiroz was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1966. He completed his MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York and has exhibited throughout Europe including the 26th São Paulo Biennial (2004) and 50th Venice Biennale (2003).
Queiroz creates works in an abstract manner often combining elements of wash and stain techniques with hard-edge lines on paper similar to the early Surrealist painter Joan Miro. His open for interpretation, mixed media art takes you into a world of fantasy and imagination.
Queiroz currently lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal.
Jorge Queiroz
Works:
An excerpt from “The Conversation Continues”
by Sue Scott between Jim Cottrell and Joe Lovett
JC: Queiroz was a real find. We were in Paris one weekend when we went to Galerie Nathalie Obadia. There was an exhibition of another artist, but on the floor were these wonderful drawings by an artist we didn’t know. The top drawing was just gorgeous, and I was intrigued.
SS: Do you remember why?
JC: It was surreal, but it was more contemporary than historical surrealism. I like the way he does little intricate drawings within a drawing. They are mostly abstract but with some figuration.
SS: You bought one drawing?
JC: I bought two drawings, which they included in his retrospective. Later, Nathalie came to the Armory show on the pier in New York and she had these 50 small drawings by Queiroz that she had brought to show Gary Garrells, who wanted them for the Museum of Modern Art, where he was the drawing curator. But when she got there, Garrells had left the Museum to take a position as Senior Curator at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
SS: Serendipity.
JC: She couldn’t sell them to the Museum of Modern Art, and she showed them to me. There was a book that featured them and I knew I just had to have those fifty drawings.
I first met Jorge in Paris, and then again at his retrospective at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, Portugal. The museum had called and they said they would really love our pieces for the show. It was at that show that I met Florence and Daniel Guerlain, who at the time were collecting drawings in depth and were great admirers of Jorge. We became very good friends and they later asked me to be on the committee for the Guerlain Drawing Prize and then later for the Committee for the Prix Duchamp, a competition they help sponsor in Paris.
SS: Your collection has such an international flavor to it. Jorge is one of many examples.
JC: Jorge is Portuguese, and at the time he was living in Porto where I would visit him. When he moved to Berlin, we would visit him there because Joe travels to Germany for treatment on his eyes. The last big work we got in Berlin by Jorge was at his studio. We became friends, he and his wife, Tania Simic, an opera singer, came for dinner one night and she was kind enough to sing for everyone. A real treat.
SS: You truly are collectors whose collection isn’t just about collecting; it’s about life and people.
JC: Jorge was doing only drawings and then all of a sudden he started to do paintings. When I went to his studio he didn’t know how these were going to fly since they were his first paintings. He had two there and I bought both of them. I really wanted to encourage him to paint on canvas, rather than just do drawings.
SS: But it was hard for him to make that switch?
JC: It was hard for his collectors and his gallerist to make that switch. People don’t like artists to change. But I think now he is sort of over that hump, because he shows here with Sikemma Jenkins & Co., one of the great New York galleries, and has had more shows with Nathalie Obadia.
We went to Paris to his wonderful show and to celebrate my 72nd birthday and having just recovered from lymphoma. The Guerlains gave a party for me and invited a number of our friends including Jorge, Damien Deroubaix, and Edouard Prulhiere. It was a great evening and nothing beats a drawing for a birthday present!
SS: These artists are a good example of what I love about you two as collectors. You don’t have to know the artist, or work from an accepted list. You didn’t know Jorge’s name when you went into Nathalie’s gallery, it was just a pure visual experience.
JC: We didn’t know who he was.