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Barahona Possollo Carlos Pedro Barahona Fernandes Possolo de Carvalho (Lisbon, August 5, 1967) is a Portuguese painter.

Biography and Main Works[edit | edit source code] Barahona Possollo showed a deep interest in Paleontology and, more significantly, in Archaeology, -... ‘those sciences of Times gone by’...-, from a very early age. At one point he seriously considered studying Archaeology in England. He has had an almost inexplicable attraction for ancient Egypt, - ever-present in his work-, since early childhood. He studied Architecture for three years at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Lisbon, before moving to Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, where he completed his degree with an unusual mark of 18/20. In 1995, he accepted an invitation to teach at this same college. Barahona Possollo has a long curriculum of one man shows. The exhibition held at the Embassy of Portugal in Belgium, in Brussels, in 1998; those held at the the ‘Sala do Veado’ gallery, in the Escola Politécnica in Lisbon, in 2006 and 2009; and 'Il Pittore e La Luce' (‘The Painter And Light’) at Galleria PGD, in Rome, in 2011 are among the most relevant. The group exhibition 'Re-Presenting The Nude', which he took part in, at Evoke Contemporary gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, in 2014, is equally noteworthy. His works are represented in several museums and public collections, such as those at the Vatican (IOR); the White House, Washington DC; the Bank of Portugal; the Communications Museum, Lisbon; the Museum of Setúbal, Setúbal, Portugal; and the UCCLA, Union of Portuguese Language Capital Cities in Lisbon, Portugal. He is also present in private collections in Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland, The Netherlands, United States of America, Argentina, United Kingdom and in particularly numerous and important ones in Italy, where his inclusion in H.H.Prince Jonathan Doria Pamphilj’s collection deserves a very special mention. He has also produced many stamps for ‘Correios de Portugal’ (the Portuguese National Mail) among which the series issued in commemoration of the 5th Centenary of Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India is of particular importance. He contributed to the first nine issues of the Portuguese edition of National Geographic Magazine. Barahona Posollo also has a notable career as a portraitist. His portraits are known for the frequent depictions of those portrayed as mythological figures. He is the author of the official portrait of President Aníbal Cavaco Silva ( Portuguese President from 2006 to 2016), in the National Portrait Gallery of Presidents, at the Museum of the Presidency of the Republic, Lisbon.

Style and Content[edit | edit source code] His work is marked by a rich palette of warm colours and shades of silky shadows, and by the technical mastery of his figurative expression. His themes are often mythological and iconographic allegories. His approach to the representation of mythology and iconography, however, is far from traditional: the gods and heroes of ancient Greece and Rome, Catholic saints, fauns and other mythical creatures are usually depicted in unexpected poses and attitudes, as though caught by surprise in scenes of their private life, that often bear manifest signs of the present age. The reflection on what is permanent and transient about Time:- on what is fortuitous in it, on what is changed and obliterated by it, and what is not-, pervades Barahona Possollo’s painting. His human figurative forms, his landscapes, (be they visions of the ruins of Egypt, Greece and Rome, real or imagined depictions of Nature and urbanscapes, such as his series on Venice), are all imbued with this same philosophical questioning. His work embodies a sort of ‘Metaphysical Ontology’ that uses the description of 'apparent', 'concrete' reality to evoke the transience of being, and grabs our attention with images that range from soothing, peaceful tranquility to extremely impetuous, even brutal intensity. A rather more ironic take on this human ontology perfuses his highly erotic ( particularly homoerotic) works, in which the human body is explicitly and beautifully displayed. In these, Barahona Possollo explores different levels of the relationship between human beings and physical pleasure. His renderings of the eroticised body purport a strong sense of humour which is purposefully provocative and sarcastic, at times. Through them, he confronts the coercive rules imposed by social norms on this 'game' of physical enjoyment:- a natural human impulse, socially suppressed, or at least tamed, for the benefit of conformity and protracted forms of social cohesion. Particularly important examples of this type of work are the conceptual painting installations 'All You Can Eat' (2013) and 'Behind The Green Door'. The latter had a strong political and sexual significance and was shown in 2020, during the pandemic crisis, in a former public toilet in central Lisbon where illicit male sexual encounters were violently repressed during Salazar’s dictatorship. In both installations, the painter uses his highly sophisticated technique to convey content that is deliberately shocking for most, through contrasting beauty of form, colour and light (which he reproduces in a particularly masterful manner).