Querubim Lapa was born in Portimão in 1925 and graduated in Sculpture and Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon. He taught at the Machado de Castro Industrial School and the António Arroio School of Decorative Arts. In 1964, he joined the Technical Council of the National Society of Fine Arts (SNBA). He has been awarded several times and has had a series of regular exhibitions since 1942 until today. As a painter, sculptor, and ceramist, Querubim is associated with Portuguese neorealism, a movement that emerged in the 1930s with a strongly anti-fascist ideology, seeking a connection between the political and cultural struggles in Portugal during the Estado Novo regime.
In his own words: “The neorealist movement came out of António Arroio. We used to visit the salons of the National Information Secretary [organism of the Estado Novo propaganda] in Alcântara, where the modernists of the António Ferro generation exhibited, a modernism that for us was already a bit decadent. Neorealism was a political and artistic reaction, because we were all a bit left-wing.”
He is the author of important public works such as the panel in the Rectorate of the University of Lisbon, the exterior and interior cladding of Casa da Sorte, also in Lisbon, two panels in Pastelaria Mexicana, the cladding of the Bela Vista metro station, and the panel “As Meninas e os Meninos” at a school named after him in Campolide. He is represented in various museums such as the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art and the Chiado Museum.
His latest works move towards the refinement and simplification of forms and colors. He passed away in Lisbon on May 2, 2016.
