Rui Chafes and Candura

Rui Chafes was born in 1966 in Lisbon, where he currently lives. He studied Sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon between 1984 and 1989. From 1990 to 1992, he attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he studied with Gerhard Merz. During this period, he translated Novalis’ Fragments from German into Portuguese, published by Assírio & Alvim in 1992. Since the mid-1980s, he has developed his work exclusively in iron or steel. He has exhibited in Portugal and internationally, notably at the Venice Biennale in 1995 and 2013, and at the São Paulo Biennale in 2004. His work has been shown in numerous museums and institutions, mainly in Europe but also in Brazil, Japan, and South Korea, and he has also presented exhibitions in public, natural, and urban spaces such as Sintra, Matera, and Bamberg. In 2004, he received the Robert Jacobsen Sculpture Prize in Germany; in 2015, the Pessoa Prize; and in 2021, the AICA Prize. In 2024, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Portuguese Catholic University.

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