José Pedro Croft

Portuguese · b. 1957

José Pedro Croft (b. 1957, Porto) is a Portuguese artist and a major figure in the renewal of contemporary Portuguese sculpture since the 1980s. Working across sculpture, drawing, and printmaking, he investigates space, perception, balance, instability, and the relationship between an artwork and its architectural surroundings. His sculptures often employ iron, steel, glass, mirrors, and brightly painted surfaces, creating shifting relationships between solid and empty space, reflection, transparency, and volume. Since the 1990s, drawing and printmaking have developed alongside his sculptural practice as parallel fields of spatial investigation. Croft represented Portugal at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 with Medida Incerta, a group of large glass-and-steel sculptures that transformed viewers’ perception of architecture, landscape, and reflection.