Martinho Correia

Carrie + zoom	Crucified + zoom	Danielle Seated + zoom	Danielle + zoom
Sam + zoom	Seated Female + zoom	Sitting Female + zoom	Standing Male + zoom

Martinho Correia's artwork results from rigorous, directed observation of the human form using only the artist's eyes, wits, and knowledge. His artwork is both classical and realist - a fantastic, systematic, and radical example of art that is a new image, from new images as experienced by the artist. We should note the very long academic tradition of art that that implies, and how such artworks take quite a long time to create. Thus it may be most accurate for us to recognize that Correia's work results from thousands of studies of his models, many visual exposures combined into one coherent new image. Such age-old painting traditions allow Correia's work to be astoundingly realistic, making every muscle, structure and texture of the human form's representation lead to a distinct and delicate psychology. By focusing on the perceptual, Correia's work makes it possible for us to feel that we are immediately in the presence of the portrait, the figure, and the humanity of each individual in his art.

— Prof. Gregory Scheckler
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
North Adams MA, USA

Martinho Isidro Correia was born on the bare Canadian prairie, in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, to parents of Italian and Portuguese origin. His route through life has been circuitous and eventful, leading him from a Fine Arts Degree at the University of Calgary in the early 1990s, to an Education Degree at the University of British Columbia three years later, followed by six adventurous years teaching art to grade school students. Life had barely begun with him however, and in the late 1990's Martinho was swept forward towards a destiny he had earlier only dreamed of. Seeking to broaden his skills as a painter, his interest deeply rooted in figurative work, he left home to learn the traditions of his craft in the historical heartland of classical figurative painting, Florence.

In Florence he discovered the work of Michael John Angel, a fellow Canadian who had studied with noted Italian master figurative painter Pietro Annigoni. Angel's life work was to resurrect the academic traditions of 19th-century French schools and invest them with a contemporary flavor. Martinho began attending the Angel Academy of Art in 2000, and his studies continue today at the Academy, where he has come to function as an instructor.

Portrait of a Portrait Artist

Calgary, Alberta, February 15, 2007-When Martinho Correia left in 2000, most people in Calgary equated portraits with a 30 minute session at a department store photo studio, not an exercise of artistic endeavor. So he was surprised when he returned to Calgary in December of 2006 to visit family, and found that portraits were suddenly a matter of civic pride.

What changed in the six years he'd been away? In 2001, the federal government announced it would create the Portrait Gallery of Canada to house the paintings it had commissioned of famous Canadians. Then in the fall of 2006, it was reported that Calgary-based EnCana was talking to the feds about moving the gallery to the new head office it was building in Calgary. Oh, and Correia had been studying classical figurative painting, with an emphasis on portraits, in Florence, Italy-the home of Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, and the birthplace of the Renaissance.

On Thursday, April 5, 2007, Correia's exhibit, Opus Fiorentina: Select works from Florence, Italy, will open at Calgary's AXIS Contemporary Art. In addition, on Saturday, April 7, Correia will present the lecture, A New Florentine Renaissance: the Rebirth of Traditional Academies. " There has been, in the last 15 years , an explosion of interest in traditional painting techniques. Students from all over the world are making their way to Florence to study the "Secrets of the Masters " at our school." explains Correia, who is represented by an agent in Florence and New York. The 40-year-old native Calgarian now splits his time between working on commissioned portraits-the latest is for an oil trader in London-and teaching at the Angel Academy of Art in Florence, a far cry from his days as an junior high art teacher in Calgary.