Manuel João Vieira (Lisbon, 1962) engages in a wide range of artistic and civic activities: a prominent figure on the music scene and a regular presence in political life, he is presented here as a painter — one of the most significant arenas of his public activity.
 

Part of the wave of emerging artists who came to prominence in the 1980s, Vieira immediately established his distinctive style. He is a prolific painter whose work is underpinned by a clear figurative vocation with a narrative bent. His canvases are populated with figures, symbols and compositional solutions that draw on Greco-Roman culture and reference the final centuries of Western painting history — from Mannerism, Baroque and Rococo to Romanticism, Symbolism, Metaphysical painting and Surrealism. These references ultimately converge within the eclectic ethos of the so-called “return to painting”, one of the defining tendencies of his generation.
 

Often large in scale, his works evoke elements of stage design and theatrical perspective, operating as metaphors for the many roles the artist himself embodies.