About the work

Monsieur is a collage of contemporary Japanese office stationary, scraps of Japanese magazines from the 1960s, pen and ink, and a little red square cut from a digital pigment print. He is either a Monsieur à la casquette or a Monsieur à la cigarette and, despite being French, he looks both like James Joyce and Mr Yamato, who ran a small metal scrap yard on the outskirts of Chiba. Behind his desk hung a large view of Florence where, he said, he had never been but wished he would go some day. His cat was called Florence, too, but he could not pronounce the l.

Date and country of birth

1949, PT

About the artist

Born 1949 Lisbon, João Penalva lives and works in London. Graduated from Chelsea School of Art (1976-1981).

João Penalva represented Portugal in the Bienal Internacional de São Paulo (1996), and the Venice Biennale (2001). He also exhibited in the Berlin Biennale (2001), Biennale of Sydney (2002), and Bienal de Cartajena de Indias, Colombia (2014).

His works are held in public and private collections including Arts Council England; South London Gallery; Towner Museum of Contemporary Art; Serralves Foundation; Gulbenkian Foundation; Berardo Museum; Ludwig Museum Budapest; Irish Museum of Modern Art; MUDAM, Luxembourg; KIASMA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Finland; FRAC Bretagne, Châteaugiron; FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims; FRAC Occitanie, Montpellier, France; Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt; and Western Bridge, The Bill and Ruth True Collection, Seattle.

Selected solo exhibitions include Camden Arts Centre, London (2000); Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2000); Tramway, Glasgow (2000); The Power Plant, Toronto (2003); Serralves Museum, Porto (2005); Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2005); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2006); Mead Gallery, University of Warwick (2007); Lunds Konsthall, Lund (2010); CAM, Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (2011); Trondheim Kunstmuseum (2014); Mudam, Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg (2018); Culturgest, Porto (2018); Lumiar Cité, Lisbon (2018); Mudam, Musée d’Art Moderne, Luxembourg (2018). Selected group exhibitions include Tate Modern; Hayward Gallery; Wellcome Collection; South London Gallery, London; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Staatliche, Kunstsammlungen, Dresden; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K21, Düsseldorf; Museu Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; MAAT Museum; and Berardo Museum, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisbon.

Awards include the DAAD Berlin Artist’s Residency (2003); The Bryan Robertson Trust Award, UK (2009); and the Paul Hamlyn Award (2020).