Isabel Martins Lhano, daughter of the painter Martins Lhano and sister of the artist Graça Martins, was born in Vila do Conde in the 1950s. She studied at the Soares dos Reis School and then at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Porto, where she enrolled in 1971. She was a scholar of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1971 and 1972.
In 1983, she began preparing her first exhibition, “Inquietações,” at the Eugénio de Almeida Foundation, and returned from Porto to live in Vila do Conde. In 1992, she was responsible for the programming and artistic direction of the Gallery of the Municipal Auditorium of Vila do Conde, and was later invited to organize exhibitions in the same auditorium. She was part of the artistic direction of the Delaunay gallery from 1996 to 1999. She is the author of the “Mom’arte” project, co-responsible for its organization, and a member of the selection and awarding jury at the Convento do Carmo Vila do Conde in 1998.
She was awarded the 1st Prize of the Graphic Contest of Sarrió, with the catalog “Acto do Corpo,” at SNBA. She also published a silkscreen print by the Centro Português de Serigrafia, Lisbon, in 1999.
In 2004, she presented “Elogio do Essencial” in Famalicão. It was a reflective exhibition in which the artist explores various perspectives in an almost cinematic tone. In her own words, “one day I dreamt of an exhibition of mine with only eyes, and then I started thinking about gazes. I am going to tell a story with gazes.”
The artist is represented in the Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art of VN de Cerveira, and through acquisitions by the Northern Delegation of the Ministry of Culture and the Engineer António Almeida Foundation, Porto.
She currently lives and works in Vila do Conde.
