29 Nov 2017

STORY 1.
Artist Paula Rego was born in Lisbon in 1934.
When her parents moved to London, she was raised by her grandmother and educated in Carcavelos. She was interested in art from a young age, but was so afraid that she wouldn`t be allowed to attend art school. When she discovered that her parents were happy with this plan, she was sent to the Slade Art School in London at the age of eighteen. Here she met her husband Victor, also a painter. For the first twenty years of their marriage, they lived mainly in Ericeira. Rego`s paintings were shown at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon and she was given money by the foundation to develop her work.
In her forties, Rego moved to London where she was given a job teaching at her old art school. Her artwork is influenced by the traditional stories she was told at a young age.
Recently Paula has illustrated a book written by her daughter Caroline, named “Sopa da Pedra” (Stone Soup) but she still lives in London. She also continued painting pictures that explore family relationships and often suggest frightening stories behind everyday familiar scenes.
This artist has won many awards and her art work can be seen in many public and private institutions around the world. Pula Rego has 43 works in the collection of the British Council, ten works in the collection of the Arts Council of England, and 46 works at the Tate Gallery, London.
I think this is a very good example of an emigrant who became successful in other countries, because she didn’t have many opportunities in Portugal and needed to go abroad searching for a better future.
(by Beatriz Barbosa)
STORY 2.
António Rosa Damásio was born in Lisbon on 25th February, 1944 and is a Portuguese Neurologist and Neuroscientist that works on brain studies and human emotions. He is also a neuroscience teacher in the University of South California. He has also written the great book “Erro de Descartes” that has changed people’s idea of the mix between reasons and emotions. The most famous sentence in the book is “All and every rational expression is based on emotions.”
Damasio studied medicine at the University of Lisbon Medical School, where he also did his neurological residency and completed his doctorate.
Before completing his doctorate in Lisbon, he worked as a research fellow in Boston at the Aphasia Research Center. 

After earning his MD, Damasio returned to the United States, eventually becoming the M.W. Van Allen Professor and Head of Neurology at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. In 2005, Damasio took up his current position as the David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California.
(by Inês Ferreira)

STORY 3.
Short story about Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese poet, who was born in 1888 in Lisbon and died in 1935 in Lisbon. When he was a little kid, because of his stepfather’s job he had to immigrate with his family to South Africa, where he studied in an English school. As he had a stronger connection to English rather than to Portuguese, his firsts poems were written in English.
In 1902 he came back to Portugal with his family, but one year later he returned to South Africa alone where he went to Cabo da Boa Esperança University. Two years later he came back to Portugal.
He is known for his several heteronyms and each one had a name and a personality.
In 1915 Fernando Pessoa with more writers created a magazine called Orpheu where they published poems about the Portuguese society.
Some curious facts about Fernando Pessoa are that one day before he died he wrote in a book ‘ I don’t know what tomorrow will bring’ and another fact is that he wrote
Coca-Cola first ad: in Portuguese the slogan is ‘ Primeiro estranha-se e depois entranha-se’ that means “First you find it strange. Then you can’t get enough of it.”
(by Rita Sousa)