Joana Rêgo

Joana Rêgo (born 1970 in Porto, Portugal) is a Portuguese painter and academic. She has exhibited regularly since 1993, and her work is held in several public and institutional collections, including the European Parliament's Contemporary Art Collection.

Education and academic career

Rêgo completed a degree in Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto (FBAUP) in 1995. Between 1998 and 1999, she pursued a master's degree at the San Francisco Art Institute with scholarships from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD). She later completed a doctorate in Art and Design at FBAUP.

She has been a professor at the Escola Superior de Artes e Design (ESAD), Matosinhos, since 1999.

Artistic practice

Rêgo works primarily in acrylics and silkscreen, and has described her practice in terms of colour blocking and layering, incorporating appropriated imagery into her compositions. She has held approximately 28 solo exhibitions in Portugal and abroad. In 2001, she received a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Luso-American Development Foundation to present a solo exhibition in Rotterdam as part of the Porto–Rotterdam European Capitals of Culture project.

Awards

  • 1st Prize for Painting, Bienal de Cerveira (sources give the 1995 and 1997 editions variously).
  • 1st BCM Painting Prize.
  • 1st Erotic Art Prize, ARGO (2003).
  • Acquisition Award, 23rd Colectiva Sócios da Árvore (2008).

Collections

Rêgo's work is held in the collections of the European Parliament, the PLMJ Foundation, the Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso Museum, and the Cerveira Biennial Museum/Foundation, among others.

Teaching career

Rêgo has been a professor at the Escola Superior de Artes e Design (ESAD), Matosinhos, since 1999. She mentored several students that pursued successful careers in art and design such as Manuel André Correia. She has also been an assistant professor at FBAUP, in the Fine Arts – Painting department, since 2019–2020, and has worked as a trainer in continuing-education courses at FBAUP since 2017.