Biography: Joao Parrinha
Riding the waves of art – João Parrinha
Artist, musician and sculptor-designer João Parrinha was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1961, the elder son of architect Artur Parrinha and school teacher Ricardina Parrinha. João grew up in an artistic environment, his father being a painter and amateur jazz musician, and showed first signs of artistic potential at nine years of age. He attended Charles Lepierre French Lycée, António Arroio Arts School and ESBAL University of Fine Arts in the Portuguese capital.
From early on, João experimented with drums, accompanying his father on the armrests of the family sofa and progressing to Brazilian percussion, until finally having his own drum made for him. He was soon asked to take part in the IBM (Industrial Blues Machine) rock and blues band, performing live at the iconic Rock Rendezvous venue in Lisbon, and participated in other bands, recording with his brother José Bruno Parrinha (also an artist and saxophone player) for the 1980s pop band Radar Kadafi. João later joined Sei Miguel’s Moeda Noise avant-garde/jazz trio on the drums, giving nearly 60 concerts over a period of two years. Since then, he has taken part in concerts of improvised music with Rodrigo Amado and VGO (Variable Geometry Orchestra) amongst others.
A competitive swimmer in his youth, João got into surfing in 1977, when the sport was unheard of in Portugal. João’s first board was second-hand, shared with his brother; both wearing woolly jumpers instead of wetsuits. Later, in the 1980s, the brothers joined Nick Uricchio and Pereira Caldas, the country’s first maker of surfboards (‘Lipsticks’) in Costa da Caparica and competed in international championships. Making his own boards for ten years, João started decorating those, as well as the Lipsticks boards, with his own artwork. In the same period, he started to exhibit his paintings in various Lisbon spaces, such as the Almada Negreiros Culture Ministry (‘Jovens Pintores’) and the prestigious Gulbenkian Foundation. In 1990, João held his first solo exhibition in the coastal town of Ericeira, where he was living and painting boards for the foremost Portuguese maker of surfboards, Semente, also designing the company logo.
In his recent artistic career, João moved into sculpture, exhibiting in galleries such as Século, Lisbon, and as part of the European Capital of Culture activities, as well as designing striking club interiors featuring his sculptures. In 1994 and 1995, he exhibited his work in Munich, Germany, together with the prominent extreme sports photographer Xandi Kreuzeder. It was also in the 1990s that João started working as an art director for the cinema (Alta Fidelidade) and television (the Doce Fugitiva soap opera), making TV spots (vodafone, TMN, Optimus mobile phone companies, Millennium BCP bank) and music videos (for the Oasis World Tour 2000 and the seminal Portuguese band Madredeus, Maria Leon/Rui Veloso, Ornatos Violeta and Zen, as well as Moonspell, for whose concerts he also executed the stage and costume design).
2005 Joao joined the artgroup Sceleton3 with Xandi Kreuzeder, German photographer – sculptor, and Luis de Dios, a Spanish painter. In 2006, João/Sceleton3 were commissioned by the Marker winter sports brand to build a 2-metre mascot griffin for the ISPO trade fair in Munich.
Between preparing exhibitions, João is currently working on a new design project, which he will present shortly.
Skeleton3 