On the death of Lourdes Castro | Fundação EDP

Like all great artists, Lourdes Castro was a unique and irreplaceable artist – for her originality, her authenticity, her searching, her discovery. Like all great artists, she provided art with new ways of seeing and new ways of making, thus granting it new beginnings.

After travelling around Europe, where she was able to see what she could not see while here, discovering, experiencing and creating, she returned to Madeira, her native island, to live in that other world that is the house and garden she created with Manuel Zimbro. There, she was like a fairy in her enchanted kingdom, from where one could see the sea, like a riddle.

Her dialogue with light and shadows was a ceaseless conversation, confirming what Fernando Pessoa declared through the voice of Alberto Caeiro, her spiritual brother: “Wise is the man who is content with the show of the world”, adding: “Because I am as big as what I see / And not as big as my height…”

With subtle wisdom, in which one can recognise pasts and futures, easts and wests, lands and skies, female and male, certainties and doubts, visions and predictions, densities and transparencies, her work is at the centre of a clear riddle which shows us the name it does not speak.

Her work depicts the three kingdoms of nature, the four elements of the universe, the five states of matter, the five senses of the body, the six points on a star and the seven gifts of the spirit.

The EDP Foundation is proud of the collaboration and friendship we maintained with Lourdes Castro. Among other milestones in this relationship, we would like to highlight the 2000 EDP Foundation Art Grand Prize, which was awarded to her; we produced and supported her exhibitions; her work is present in our Art Collection; it was her who lent us her artist’s book to be used as the portfolio in issue 1 of Electra magazine.

The death of Lourdes Castro represents a fundamental loss for contemporary art. For both her friends and admirers, the world is a poorer place without her.

The greatness and relevance of the work of the author of the “Great Shadow Herbarium” calls for us to continue our task of asserting and projecting her work both in Portugal and worldwide.

The EDP Foundation expresses our condolences for the death of Lourdes Castro and we reaffirm our commitment to remembering this great artist and her work which, even in her absence, will keeps her with us and continue to captivate us.

 

THE EDP FOUNDATION

 

11 Jan 2022