(Guimarães, Portugal, 1939)
He received his artistic training through various teachers such as Teresa de Sousa, Gil Teixeira Lopes, and also attended engraving classes at the Society of Portuguese Engravers.
In 1961 he made a trip to Paris and was deeply impressed by Fauvist painting (Fauvism in particular was decisive in the development of Brazilians Anita Malfatti, Emiliano Cavalcanti and Vicente do Rego), and adopted his own artistic name. On successive visits to Europe, he continued to study and admire the work of Klee, Kandinsky, and the Bauhaus and Die Brücke painters.
A military posting took him to Angola between 1967 and 1974, where he took the opportunity to study African art. He held several exhibitions and won the First Prize for Engraving at the Modern Art Show of Luanda, Angola, as well as the First Prize of the University of Luanda. Back in Portugal he was awarded a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to research into engraving and photography, and this same foundation hosted an exhibition entitled Rubens and José de Guimaraes. In 1983 he began to work his paper sculptures with other materials such as glass, mirrors, and tiles, achieving a work of brilliant and very singular appearance. In 1989 he was invited by Paul Enbel, director of the Goethe Institute in Osaka, to build and paint paper parrots, working and researching the Japanese technique of this material.
Among other prizes, the President of the Portuguese Republic awarded him the Order of the Infante Dom Enrique, and he also received the Plastic Arts Prize of the AICA, Lisbon. His work can also be found in various museums and foundations in different countries such as the Middelheim Museum (Belgium); Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), University of Sao Paulo (Brazil); Museum of Fine Arts, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil); European Parliament, Strasbourg; Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art, Madrid; Centre of Contemporary Art, Porto; Frederick Weisseman Foundation, Los Angeles (USA).