Francisco Vidal Angola, 1978

Francisco Vidal is best known for his paintings and drawings, which bring together bold colours and patterns on handmade paper or canvas, often tiled together to create installations. The artist’s work playfully blends various aesthetic influences, such as Cubism, African wax-print textiles, 1980s hip-hop culture, contemporary graffiti, and street art.

Working across drawing, painting, silkscreen printing and installation, Francisco Vidal employs unusual supports such as handmade cotton paper he produces himself, industrialised African machetes, synthetic silk or raw plywood panels and frames. In a creative cross-pollination spirit, the artist continually makes use of symbols from a wide variety of backgrounds together with all sorts of heterogeneous material such as Pop and street art, posters and comic books, graffiti and psychedelic aesthetics or patterns from the Vlisco and wax fabric traditions. The works also feature allusions to contemporary urban culture and consumer goods linked with the sports and fashion industry. 

Francisco Vidal concluded his Master of Fine Arts at Columbia University in New York (USA), in 2010, and a BA in 2002, at the Caldas da Rainha School of Arts and Design (Polytechnic of Leiria, Portugal). In addition, he completed the Independent Study Programme at Mamaus School of Visual Arts in Lisbon, in 2005. 

With a solid artistic career and regular exhibitions since 2005, Vidal is represented in several significant private and public collections, such as the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Portugal), the EDP Foundation Collection (Portugal), the Scheryn Art Collection (South Africa), the PLMJ Foundation (Portugal), Sindika Dokolo’s Collection, amongst others. 

Highlights of his career include the representation of Angola at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 and the participation at the 2015 EXPO Milan (Italy).