Albuquerque Mendes came to painting after having been involved with performance since the mid ’70s. Combining the vivid, expressive colors of traditional Portuguese folk art with aspects of conceptual artmaking, his work can be seen as a model of resistance to the banal realism that has dominated Portuguese art in recent years. His work engages essential aspects of recent Portuguese culture; at the same time, it is rooted in more general European traditions and the memory of a strong popular and folk culture—a mix of influences that is perhaps the reason for Mendes’ successful reception in