Vítor Pomar, son of painter Júlio Pomar, was born in Lisbon in 1949. He studied art at the School of Fine Arts of Porto (ESBAP, 1966-1967) and the School of Fine Arts of Lisbon (ESBAL 1967-1969), before embarking on various journeys that would nourish his understanding of and practice in artistic expression.
In 1970, shortly after his first solo exhibition at the Galeria Quadrante in Lisbon, he left for The Netherlands (partly to avoid military service), where he resided until 1985. There, he studied at the Free Academy in The Hague and at the Academy of Art in Rotterdam, graduating in 1973 and subsequently teaching screen printing at the former (1973-1974). Thanks to a scholarship from the Dutch Ministry of Culture, Mexico would be his next stop (1974), before New York (1982) and Amsterdam (1982-1985).
This period in Pomar’s career was one of personal and artistic growth. He consolidated a very unique creative process, combining experimentalism and spirituality (chiefly Buddhism and meditation, the latter being a constitutive part of his process) in his exploratory approach to painting. Moving progressively away from black and white abstract expressionism towards a multi-media, pluri-chromatic practice that included photography, the artist tinkered with and updated his approach.
Back in his native Portugal (1985), Pomar went on creative hiatus to dedicate himself to institutional endeavours, founding and directing the Álvaro de Campos Cultural Association in Tavira between 1987 and 1989. Once resumed, his artistic exploration would become all the more experimental.
Important exhibitions have punctuated and paralleled Pomar’s career. In 1977, he took part in the Alternativa Zero (‘Zero Alternative’) exhibition, whose visibility helped him land an important painting exhibition at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1980. In 2003, he received the EDP Foundation’s New Artists Award, an honour promptly followed by an anthological exhibition of his work at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto. In 2007, the Asa publishing house (now owned by Leya) published the first major retrospective in two volumes of the artist’s work in various areas: painting, drawing, photography, sculpture and video. The publication also included three extensive essays by Pomar, with a theoretical and philosophical explanation of his aesthetic experience and reflection on the human condition, as well as an anthology of texts by the artist. A retrospective dedicated entirely to Pomar’s film and video work was organised by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Centro de Arte Moderna in 2011.
Since then, a list of selected solo exhibitions reads as follows: Unsurpassable/Imbatível, Palácio Anjos, Oeiras (2021); Moral da História, Sismógrafo, Porto (2020); Mind in Cave, Greene’s Tutorial College, Estoril (2017); O Silêncio do Coração, Ar.Co, Lisbon (2017); Spontaneous Fruition, Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon (2017); Vítor Pomar. O carro à frente dos bois, Galeria Sete, Coimbra (2016); apparent but nonexistent, Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon (2014); Karma Mudra, Guarda (2012); Uma Pátria Assim…, EDP, Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon (2012); Os Atributos do Ar, Galeria Bloco 103, Lisbon (2011); Nada para fazer nem sítio aonde ir, Centro de Arte Moderna, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (2011).
