Natália Gromicho marks 25 years of a career that made her eternal

Travelling was always an inspiring balm to Natália Gromicho’s creative process. The exposure to the diametrically opposed reality made her susceptible to multiple stimulus which translated into several languages that evolved throughout her multi-faceted career. The year of 2020 – which is turning out to be quite challenging world-wide – is special to the artist’s extraordinary journey for it marks her career’s silver anniversary as a painter. Natália Gromicho’s resilience, in a country that not always embraces art and culture with enough vigor, ended up, however, leading her to victory, representing Portugal in various international exhibitions, individual and collective, in more than a hundred exhibits. She was never looking to be an idol but rather to be understood by the impressive messages that her lines convey. With time she achieved this goal, although more abroad than nationally, with artwork integrated in individual and institutional collections in countries such as Australia, USA, Brazil, Italy, France, Russia, United Kingdom, East Timor, Singapore or India. Milestones all the more encouraging given Gromicho’s painting evolution, gradually, to a more abstract stage, inviting the public to observe, decide and interpret what they see in the canvas. The contemporary artist also brings to the canvas pressing matters of the present, whether it’s about the human right’s level or other themes that urgently need to be debated. This mirror of reality, naked and raw, is thoroughly reflected in the collective exhibitions “Downtown Chiado” and “Lisbon International Contemporary Exhibition”, as well as in monthly exhibits in different venues and pop-up events scheduled to mark her 25 years of career throughout 2020. However, the artist, who paints in “open studio” regimen, allowing the public to witness her performance, was also startled by the almost surreal situation of the real world. The world crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic forced Natália Gromicho, and her fans, to await for safer times to celebrate. Van Gogh, Picasso, Júlio Pomar or Vieira da Silva, the masters who inspired her, did not anticipate, through painting, a time so apocalyptic que would make the world stop making us rethink the status of things. Natália Gromicho will, at least, have the opportunity transpose to the canvas the global “reset” which caught everything and everybody by surprise.