Manuel Botelho

Simultaneously, he searched for his roots in the past, and he found himself reflecting on how the present seemed haunted by the memories of 41 years of oppression (Salazar and Caetano's dictatorship – 1933–1974): "We sense it is not Botelho' personal nightmare, but a collective one; the subject he is taking on is the ruinous fabric of a whole society.

"[2] At the Byam Shaw School of Art Botelho "created a new vision of oppression with a cast of archetypal characters, led by the figure of the Priest/Bishop/Dictator", and by the time he arrived at the Slade, he "was discovering a genuine iconography – a world of donkeys and hovels, of peasants working the fields with primitive tools, of crumbling stone – built walls – a pre-industrial past that stands as a metaphor for modern Portugal".

By the late 1990s his multi-layered representations alluded to a wide range of subject matter, from present-day life to traditional religious themes, "bridging the gap between sacred and profane, contemporary temporality and timelessness".

[5] In 2006 he "resorted to a new medium, photography, to build a body of work that nevertheless reflects the main characteristics of his practice: examination of historical issues, references to the Western pictorial tradition, and figuration as a stylistic signature".

[7] Examining a traumatic event through an allegorical narrative, "Botelho probes Portuguese collective consciousness with sensitivity without failing to point out the political turmoil of the colonial era".