With broad brushstrokes and layered paint, the Portuguese artist creates expressive works that leave room for interpretation, in a recognisable style that goes beyond conventional portraiture
A broad brush, a builder’s spatula, paint thrown onto the canvas. Mário Henrique’s rapid gestures leave visible traces across the works he is presenting at ArtCatto gallery in Loulé.
Amid splashes and sweeping brushstrokes, faces emerge on large-scale canvases, rarely conveying a single, unequivocal emotion, yet looking directly back at the viewer.
Mário Henrique’s portraits do not ask us to recognise anyone. Instead, they invite us to linger: what first appears to be sadness might reveal itself as melancholy or saudade. “I’m not so interested in painting someone recognisable,” he explains.
Obsession Is Romantic
The artist leaves room for this uncertainty, and for the memories each person brings with them when approaching the canvas.
His path to painting began early and also took him through the world of design. As a child, he would draw on restaurant tablecloths whilst his parents enjoyed the peace and quiet. He graduated in Design and Communication from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon and went on to work in digital advertising, including as creative director of teams in Portugal, Spain, and Brazil.
He later became a partner in a restaurant booking platform that was acquired by the TripAdvisor group.
Symbiosis 02
Selling his stake brought that chapter of his career to a close and gave him the opportunity to devote his time to painting, which until then had remained a parallel pursuit. “I wanted to see how far it could take me,” he recalls.
His background in design continues to influence his choice of the human figure. Mário Henrique feels more drawn to figurative art than abstraction: he looks for recognisable forms and finds in the face an ideal subject through which to explore the subtleties of emotion. Scale magnifies them.
Symbiosis 01
For the artist, it is also important that the marks left by his tools, the drips, and the layers of accumulated paint reveal the physical effort that goes into each work. “I didn’t set out to find this style; it found me,” he says of an artistic identity he attributes to his impatience and love of movement.
Even so, not everything begins with a clearly defined image. A song, a film, or a photograph taken whilst walking around Lisbon can spark a new work.
Enjoy The Silence
Cinema, however, holds a special place among his influences: close-ups, light falling across a face, the composition of a scene, and the poses of its characters all shape the way he paints. He admires Jenny Saville, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Picasso, and Caravaggio, but considers cinema the art form that inspires him most in everyday life.
In his studio, he works quickly and on several paintings at once, although he feels there is never enough time to develop all the ideas that come to mind. He also admits that “chance is responsible for at least half of every work”.
Somnium 16 series XVI
There are, however, details that he approaches with greater precision before deciding that a painting is complete. Even then, when he encounters one of his works again in a collector’s home, he often feels there is still something he could add.
His career has taken his work to exhibitions in Portugal and abroad. ArtCatto highlights an honourable mention at the Brasília Biennial of Contemporary Arts in 2016, whilst Mário Henrique particularly remembers an exhibition in Memphis, in the US.
At a dinner for collectors, his work was accompanied by Portuguese music and a menu created by a chef with Portuguese roots. The attention to detail made it one of the most memorable evenings of his career.
Materia 06 Series IV
It is also outside Portugal that, according to Mário Henrique, most of his work is sold, particularly to American collectors. In the Algarve, his relationship with ArtCatto has both a professional and personal dimension. He has worked with the Loulé gallery for six years and values the friendships he has formed with the team in a region that is also part of his family history.
“There has never been a year in my life when I haven’t come to the Algarve,” he says.
That connection now enters a new chapter with the group exhibition celebrating ArtCatto’s 15th anniversary.
Opened in September, the exhibition brings together works by Mário Henrique, Pedro Guimarães, Dom Pattinson, Jisbar, and Luc Lavenseau, including pieces created especially for the occasion. Gallery director Frederic Ponte describes it as a “strong and bold” collection, true to the energy of the artist’s work.
Come As You Are
He highlights the spontaneity of Mário Henrique’s gestures and the balance between composition, rhythm, and colour. The brushstrokes, he says, give the works “an almost physical energy that can be felt from a distance”. He adds: “His work is immediately recognisable, yet never feels static.”
Mário Henrique, for his part, is well aware of how audiences respond to his portraits, but he also enjoys exploring other directions. It is a way of stepping outside his comfort zone and pursuing the ideas that, he says, come to him every day. “When I have time, I like to swim out of my depth.
It’s when you’re on that boundary, between swimming comfortably and drowning, that you discover the good things,” he explains.
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