Tchalé Figueira, b. 1953
Biography

Tchalé Figueira was born Carlos Alberto Figueira in 1953 in Mindelo, on the island of São Vicente, Cape Verde, into a family of artists — his brother Manuel Figueira also became a noted painter. After years of travel and work through the Netherlands and Switzerland, including a period as a dockworker, he settled in Basel and trained at the Kunstschule Basel between 1974 and 1985.

Figueira returned to Cape Verde in 1985 and established the Ponta D’Praia Atelier in Mindelo, which he has run ever since. His practice extends beyond painting into poetry, published writing and music, and he has described social criticism — including direct critiques of the patriarchal structures of Cape Verdean society — as inseparable from an artist’s task.

In 2008 he received the Prix Fondation Blachère at the Dakar Biennale in Senegal. His paintings are held in museums and private collections across Africa, Europe and the Americas, and since 1985 his work has been shown in Switzerland, France, Portugal, Angola, Senegal, the United States and Cape Verde. He is also the author of several books, among them Todos os Naufrágios do Mundo, O Azul e a Luz and Solitário.

In Lisbon, Figueira showed with Influx Contemporary Art — the exhibition programme run alongside African Contemporary between 2009 and 2011 — where his solo exhibition Do Arco da Velha was presented in 2011.

source: Wikipedia; This Is Not A White Cube; MutualArt; Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Próximo Futuro