The artist Pedro Vaz is the winner of the Drawing Prize Luso-American Foundation for Development (FLAD) 2025, worth 20 thousand euros, the organization of the Drawing Room Lisboa contemporary art fair announced this Saturday.
In an initiative by FLAD in partnership with the fair dedicated to drawing, the award is intended to “support artistic production and innovation” and is aimed at “promising Portuguese artists”, according to the organization.
The 8th edition of the Drawing Room Lisboa fair runs until Sunday at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes (SNBA) with 23 art galleries and more than 65 Portuguese and foreign artists represented.
The FLAD Drawing Prize was unanimously awarded by the jury composed of the artist João Onofre, the curator Miguel von Hafe Pérez, and the director of Drawing Room Lisboa Mónica Álvarez Careaga.
“Trace of fire”, 2025, by Pedro Vaz
“A proposal [de Pedro Vaz] it combines a conceptual rigor that is complemented by a plastic formalization of undeniable singularity. Referring to the tragedy of contemporary forest fires, the artist immersed himself in the territory from the 9th to the 25th of August this year, to later propose a visual reflection that unfolds from the drawing matrix to the territory of the moving image and the document”, describes the jury in a statement released by the organization.
When choosing the winner, the “possibility of art asserting itself as a socially relevant discourse” in their work also weighed.
Finalists Ana Manso, Luísa Jacinto, Mariana Gomes and Tiago Baptista were also competing for the FLAD Drawing Prize. The work of these artists is on display until Sunday at Galeria Pintor Fernando Azevedo, at SNBA.
This Saturday, the organization also awarded the National Press Award, this year awarded to two artists present at Drawing Room Lisboa: José Loureiro, represented by Galeria Fonseca Macedo and Cecília Costa, represented by Belo Galsterer.
In this edition, Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda created a new Editorial Prize — awarded to Tiago Baptista, represented by Galeria 3+1 Arte Contemporânea — which consists of the selection of a Portuguese artist to create a monograph about his work.
The monograph will be part of the Art and Artists Collection, published by Imprensa Nacional and will be presented in the next edition of Drawing Room Lisboa.
These award-winning artists join João Vasco Paiva, Sebastião Casanova and Balcony Gallery who received the Millennium BCP Foundation Awards on Friday: Outstanding Artistic Project Award, Millennium BCP Foundation Acquisition Award — Emerging Talent and Curatorial Gallery Project Award, respectively.
From Lisbon, the galleries Arte Periférica, Braçoperna44, Carlos Carvalho — Arte Contemporânea, Dialogue, Galeria 111, Galeria Filomena Soares, Galeria Miguel Nabinho, No.No Gallery, Salgadeiras Arte Contemporânea and This is Not a White Cube are also present at the fair.
From Porto, Galeria Nuno Centeno, Galeria Pedro Oliveira, Kubikgallery, Lehmann and Presença are presenting, while from the Azores comes Fonseca Macedo — Arte Contemporânea, a regular presence at the event dedicated to the vitality of the discipline of drawing.
In addition to these Portuguese names, Drawing Room Lisboa also includes foreign galleries such as Galería Silvestre (Madrid), Siboney (Santander) and Trinta Arte Contemporánea (Santiago de Compostela).
Newcomers to the fair are the galleries This is Not a White Cube, Dialogue and BraçoPerna 44, from Lisbon, and Galería Bibli, from Santa Cruz de Tenerife, according to information from the organization.
Among the artists represented by the different galleries are names from the Portuguese contemporary scene such as Pedro Cabrita Reis, Pedro Calapez, José Pedro Croft, António Olaio, Manuel Caeiro, Ana Manso and Mariana Gomes, side by side with artists from different geographies such as Eric Fok (China), Pilar Mackenna (Chile), Vicente Blanco (Spain), Klaas Vanhee (Belgium) and Cássio Markowski (Brazil).
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