Bertina Lopes

*1924 ✝2012 | Mosambik/Italien

The story of Bertina Lopes – artist, activist, and Roman by adoption – is one of the great stories in contemporary art and politics. She is considered the mother of contemporary African painting. Her mother was Mozambican from Maputo, her father a Portuguese entrepreneur. She completed her art studies locally and later in Lisbon, and returned to Maputo as a teacher in 1953, influencing local artists such as the self-taught Malangatana Ngwenya (1936-2011). In Africa the early 1960s was incandescent, with anti-colonial movements followed by national independence for many countries and B. Lopes was part of this fight. In Maputo, her contact with poets – particularly through her first husband Virgilio de Lemos with whom she had twin sons in 1955 – writers, and political activists was fundamental in forming her anti-fascist activism both in Portugal (where she returned to study and exhibit) and Mozambique.