Jose Pedro Croft - Zonder titel

Gravure van de Portugese kunstenaar Jose Pedro Croft (1957).

Artist biography
José Pedro Croft is an established contemporary artist, who was born in Portugal, like other renowned artists such as Sara, João Onofre, Rui Calçada Bastos, Magda Delgado, and José Lourenço. José Pedro Croft was born in 1957.
About José Pedro Croft's works
José Pedro Croft is best known for working in the fields of Conceptual and Abstraction. Defined as a movement in the late 1960s, simultaneously in Europe and America, Conceptual art was significantly influenced by the simplicity of Minimalism, although it took a step further in rejecting all pre-existing conceptions one would have about art. Defining Conceptual art can be complex, as the boundaries are not clearly set, and constantly shifting. The artworks can take the form of almost anything, but the core idea stays the same - the strategies and concepts behind the art are more important than the finished artwork itself. The conceptual artists use a multitude of materials and forms to freely explore the multitude of possibilities through which they want to convey their message. Some of the most critically acclaimed figures of Conceptualism include artists such as Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner and Yoko Ono. French artist Marcel Duchamp is considered to be the forefather of Conceptualism, with his artwork Fontaine, where he controversially tried to blur the boundaries between art and reality.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, many artists were hoping for a change that would allow art to encompass the transitions in society occuring at the time. Abstract art therefore indicates a desire to break free from the more classical depictions of reality, in which artists were constrained. With the use of geometrical shapes, colours and gestural elements, artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braques were able to lay the foundations for what would become an essential branch of modern art. With abstract art, objects and figures are simplified, schematised, which can arguably provide the viewer with a more spiritual experience, since the focus is not put on the material world, but represents an invitation to delve into reflection.
Galleries and Exhibitions
José Pedro Croft is represented by 4 galleries around the world, including countries such as France, Portugal, and Spain. The galleries exhibiting José Pedro Croft's work include Galerie Bernard Bouche in Paris, Galeria Vera Cortês in Lisbon, as well as Galería Helga De Alvear in Madrid. José Pedro Croft's work has most recently been exhibited at Irène Laub Gallery in Brussels (06 September 2018 until 19 October 2018) with the exhibition SLICE AND DICE. José Pedro Croft's other most recent exhibitions recorded on Artland include the exhibitions; EXTENDED SPACES (05 September 2019 - 16 October 2019) at Irène Laub Gallery in Brussels and ACHROME (20 June 2019 - 19 July 2019) at Irène Laub Gallery in Brussels.
Further Biographical Context for José Pedro Croft
José Pedro Croft was born in 1957 and was primarily inspired by the 1970s. The 1970s were a period of consolidation and progress in the arts, most often defined as a response to the dominant tensions of the preceding decade. Conceptual art developed as a influential movement, a partial evolution of and response to minimalism. Land Art took the artwork into the sprawling outdoors, taking creative production away from commodities and looking to engage with the earliest ideas of environmentalism. Process art combined elements of conceptualism with other formal reflections, creating mysterious and experimental bodies of work. Expressive figurative painting began to regain importance for the first time since the decline of Abstract Expressionism twenty years before, especially in Germany where Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz became highly influential figures worldwide. Many of the artists who became so famous and successful in the 1960s remained leading figures. For example, Andy Warhol branched out into film and magazine publishing, the first type of cross cultural activity for a visual artist. This secured his reputation as a major international celebrity in his own right. New York maintained an influential position in the international art world, ensuring that international artists continued to gravitate to the galleries, bars and downtown scene there. Towards the end of the decade, the emerging practices of graffiti and street art were beginning to gain attention in the fine art community. Artists including Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat were working in downtown Manhattan and ensuring that spray paint and tagging gained some validity as a fine art practice, a trend which would fully emerge and dominate during the next decade. International movements began to gain popularity included feminism, which translated strongly into the visual culture, and photorealism which had begun in the 1960s and enjoyed momentous commercial and critical success. For the first time painters and sculptors from Latin America were embraced by the dominant critical and institutional levers in New York. The predominantly Italian Arte Povera Movement gained global recognition during the 1970s, with artists like Jannis Kounnelis, Mario Merz, and Michelangelo Pistoletto achieving worldwide acclaim. In Japan and Korea, artists associated with the Mono-Ha movement explored on encounters between natural and industrial materials such as stone, glass, cotton, sponge, wood, oil and water, arranging them in mostly unchanged, ephemeral conditions. The works focused on the interplay between these various elements and the surrounding space, and had a strong interest in the European ideas of phenomenology.