The works selected for the exhibition at the CAPC relate to one of the typologies present in Fernando Calhau's production throughout his artistic career and which has, in the body of his work, a greater place — Design.

We would say that the drawing appears in Fernando Calhau's work as a kind of breathing, a rhythmic respiratory impulse, sometimes changing and sometimes repetitive, and it covers all his work, manifested both as a preparatory element for the construction of the work (study, sketch, note) and as a work itself.

Dated between the late 70s and the beginning of the 80s, there is a vast set of pages belonging to a series of works in which architectural and sculptural representation and its relationship with light (which gives it to see) are the matrix for its conception. Produced and exhibited for the first time in a solo exhibition at the Galeria Quadrum (under the title “Desenhos”), they were accompanied, as part of the exhibition, by some of the sculptural elements to which they refer (or to which, perhaps, they refer). Working on this thin border between the final work and the preparatory essay, they concentrate on themselves some of the most pressing issues of their journey — the concern with space and its representation, the erasing of forms both through the absence of light and the accumulation of matter, minimalism and the study of its formal peculiarities, or the presence of night in its most symbolic dimension.

His drawing also thinks of Painting, or it is also through him that Calhau thinks of Painting. In a series of large drawings, dating from 2002 and presented for the first time in the exhibition Um passo no escuro (which he carried out with Rui Chafes, in the Pavilhão Branco do Museu da Cidade, in Lisbon), Fernando Calhau explores the idea of monochromatism using the entire surface of the paper, where he vigorously superimposes countless layers of thousands of charcoal lines until he reaches an almost total black. The same occurs in a set of slightly earlier square drawings that establish an interesting relationship with a set of square black paintings (which are also presented in this exhibition at the Colégio das Artes space).

These works confirm, on the one hand, the enormous space of freedom that drawing occupied during the artist's career — very evident in the curiosity of the presence of the two 1989 drawings that, in a lively and spontaneous way, seem to represent a whale — and on the other, the extremely gifted designer that Fernando Calhau was and how much the discipline constituted for him as an operative tool of thought.

The exhibition O Mapa do Mar by Fernando Calhau is the result of a partnership between the Centro de Artes Visuais, the Círculo de Artes Plásticas and the Colégio das Artes da Universidade de Coimbra is spread across these three institutions, each one exploring different facets of Fernando Calhau's work and legacy in the year that marks 10 years since his premature death.

Born in Lisbon in 1948, Calhau began his artistic career at a very young age, in 1966. With a first moment of interest in engraving, he joined the Escola de Belas Artes de Lisboa, which he would conclude in 1973, to go to London to study engraving at the Slade School with Bartolomeu Cid dos Santos, who was teaching there.

Returning to Portugal after April 25, 1974 (like many other artists), Calhau developed a multiple path that was reconciled with his work as head of the visual arts area of the State Secretariat for Culture — a position he assumed in 1976 and greatly limited the visibility of his work.

During the seventies, Fernando Calhau moved from the practice of painting to an interest in photography and the use of super 8mm film and video to, at the end of the decade, develop an important exhibition (Night Works) in which photography, monochrome painting and neon intersect.

During the eighties and nineties, he would choose painting again, now combined with steel structures and sometimes neon words in works that have a rare scale and assertiveness.

The drawing also accompanied his journey on a regular basis, constituting almost a map of his concerns and research, articulated with painting and his space research.

Fernando Calhau was, since 1997, director of the Instituto de Arte Contemporânea, a structure he conceived and founded, and, in this sense, his work would have a scarce presence in exhibitions, although he continued to produce.

In 2001, already seriously ill, she held a retrospective exhibition of her work at the Centro de Arte Moderna da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Work in Progress), from which a catalog was published with a long interview revealing many lesser-known aspects of her career.

Fernando Calhau would die in 2002 and having done an exhibition with the sculptor Rui Chafes (Um passo no escuro).