Ricardo Gouveia

Place: Madeira

Born: 1966

Biography:

Ricardo Gouveia, a Portuguese-born American muralist, painter, and political artist, has been making waves in the San Francisco community since his arrival in 1985. Born in 1966, Gouveia was raised on the island of Madeira in Portugal, where he joined the Center for Cultural Action (CACF) in Funchal and connected with older artists.

Early Life and Education

Gouveia earned a BFA degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1991 and an MFA degree from Stanford University in 1997. From 1984 until 2002, he used the last two digits of the current year as part of his name, finally settling upon '23' in 2003.

Artistic Career

Gouveia is one of the founding members of the Clarion Alley Mural Project collective in 1992 and is still an active member. He is considered by some art critics and curators to be part of the first generation of the San Francisco Mission School art movement. Many of Gouveia's 20+ murals are located in the South of Market (SOMA) neighborhood in San Francisco.

• The first of a series of San Francisco murals, the forty foot tall shield-shaped street sign mural Innercity Home (1995) is located in the Tenderloin neighborhood and can be seen from a distance when entering the city on the freeway.
• The San Francisco pop art mural One Tree (1995) was one of his more iconic works, it was located near a freeway ramp at 10th and Bryant streets and featuring a mural of a street sign pointing to a single tree which grew nearby.
• Gouveia's artwork has highlighted world politics and political prisoners, from the Black Panthers and the Angola Three to Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose conviction for the murder of a policeman is contested, and the American Indian Movement's Leonard Peltier.

Gouveia created a controversial statue of Leonard Peltier that was removed from the grounds of the American University in January 2017. In 2005, he created a statue based on the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute titled Victory Salute, a twenty-two foot tall monument of two men: Tommie Smith and John Carlos.

Teaching and Exhibitions

Gouveia is an occasional professor at the San Francisco Art Institute. He has designed several installations as part of the 2006 Liverpool Biennial. His work is in the collection of di Rosa, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and the Berardo Collection Museum. Wikioo.org features Gouveia's artwork, including his murals and paintings. The website provides an extensive database of artwork and artist biographies, making it a valuable resource for art aficionados. https://Wikioo.org/@/RicardoGouveia https://Wikioo.org/Art.nsf/O/A@D3C5ZH https://Wikioo.org/Art.nsf/AllPages Note: The biography is based on the provided text and may not be a complete or entirely accurate representation of Ricardo Gouveia's life and work.