At United Planet, we believe that art is an amazing way of honoring the diversity of people and cultures. We also believe that art helps to Unite our Planet! We are very happy to celebrate the important work of unique European artist Santiago Ribeiro, whose paintings present individual and collective experiences of modern society.
Santiago Ribeiro was born in Coimbra, Portugal. In his interview to Portuguese American Journal, Santiago Ribeiro says that one day his father brought home 40 art books from the library, and he was amazed by illustrations of impressionist and surrealist art forms. Ribeiro states that his first art lesson was looking through these exciting books. Studying illustrations made him fell in love with the art and paintings. Ribeiro attended art classes at the Escola Avelar Brotero and Escola Superior de Educação of Coimbra but he dropped out of schools because he preferred to dedicate all his time to painting rather than going to classes. Santiago Ribeiro believes that he became a surrealist painter even before he knew what surrealism was. 
For Ribeiro surrealism is “absolute unlimited unrestrained freedom…Surrealist imagery draws from dreams and visions allowing the unconscious to express itself.” Human behavior is the main topic of Ribeiro’s paintings. Most of his paintings were described as “complex compositions illustrating deep concerns about modern society and its individual and collective behavior.” This is how poet and writer António Arnaut characterizes Ribeiro’s paintings:”Painting of Santiago Ribeiro gives us the real and the inside out, the unreal and its semi- darkness, the movement and its hyperbole, like the taste of the sower that caresses the harvest. If the trait is surrealist what his paintings show us, in a fair balance of colors, is another reality, as if the figures that challenge us were our own shadows lifted from the depths of memory.” Santiago Ribeiro is a founder of a project “International Surrealism Now”, which has promoted exhibits in over 30 countries. He collaborated with local artists worldwide and promoted events and exhibitions that included various artworks of sculpture, painting, photography and digital art. Right now, Santiago Ribeiro is preparing the largest world exhibition of contemporary Surrealism art in Europe, which will take place in Ribeiro’s home town Coimbra on November 17,2018.
Butterflies oil on canvas
Orchestra oil on canvas
Levitate oil on canvas
The City of Slat
oil on canvas
Surreal Mass production oil on canvas
Post written by Anastasia Gaudio, United Planet Contributor
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