Graça Pereira Coutinho
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Coutinho was born in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon. She was the granddaughter of the Portuguese aviation pioneer, Gago Coutinho. She attended the sculpture course at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts (ESBAL) between 1966 and 1971. Becoming disillusioned with the extreme academicism of that institution, she moved to London in 1971, where she connected with other Portuguese artists living in England, many of whom had left Portugal because of the autocratic Estado Novo government of the time. There, she studied at St. Martins School of Art, taking a postgraduate course between 1974 and 1977. Having initially enrolled in the sculpture course, she switched to a postgraduate degree in painting. In 1974, she received a scholarship from the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) and between 1975 and 1977 she received a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon.[1][2][3]
Career
Coutinho has lived and worked in London since first moving there. Her art covers a variety of media, from painting and sculpture to photography and installation art. Her work has been said to be guided by principles of conceptual art, and to reference the works of Eva Hesse and Agnes Martin. She uses materials taken directly from the natural world (wood, earth, sand, water, straw, etc.), combined with threads and fabrics, plastic, glass, and other man-made materials. Her work has been said to reveal a particular "appreciation for precarious and ephemeral materials", which she uses in an unconventional way. She paints with her hands, never with brushes.[1][3]
