Alceu Ribeiro

A. Ribeiro. Original oil canvas constructivist painting

2007

Alceu Ribeiro was born in Artigas in 1919. A scholarship allowed him to settle with his brother, also an artist, in Montevideo and start his studies with the Master Joaquín Torres García. He studied with the master for 10 years until his death in 1949. While he was a student, his work was already recognized with several awards from the National Hall of Montevideo, in 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1945. In 1946, he participated in the “Uruguayan Modern Paint Exhibition” in Paris. He found El Molino School in 1949 and that same year he made his first commissioned mural for the Light Palace of Montevideo. Shortly thereafter, in 1953, he held his first solo exhibition at the Faculty of Architecture of Montevideo. He had great success around this time and started making major mural projects, both pictorial and sculptural. In 1962, he entered as a professor at the Universidad de Montevideo. The very next year, Ribeiro went on a long trip through Europe and held tours in South America, exhibiting between other places and at the Zea Museum in Medellín. In 1964, he returned to Montevideo and three years later, he held his first solo exhibition in the United States at the Mayfair Gallery in Washington, D.C. He later exhibited his works in museums and galleries across South America, the United States and Europe and eventually settled in 1979 in Palma de Mallorca. His works are in the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan Manuel Blane, the Contemporary Art Museum of Madrid and other public and private collections across Europe and America. Ribeiro died in Palma de Mallorca on November 22, 2013.