Ricardo "Rigo 23" Gouveia
Portuguese muralist, painter, and political artist Ricardo Gouveia was born on the island of Madeira. He earned a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Stanford University, CA. He lives and works in San Francisco.
Gouveia is considered by some art critics and curators to be part of the first generation of the San Francisco Mission School art movement. Among the subjects highlighted in his work are world politics and political prisoners from the Black Panthers and the Angola Three to Mumia Abu-Jamal (whose conviction for the murder of a policeman is contested), and the American Indian Movement's Leonard Peltier. Gouveia created a controversial statue of Peltier that was removed from the grounds of the American University, Washington, DC, in January 2017.
In 2005, he created a statue based on the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute titled Victory Salute, a 22-foot-tall monument depicting the Olympic athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Victory Salute was commissioned for the campus of San Jose State University, where Smith and Carlos were student-athletes. He designed several installations as part of the 2006 Liverpool Biennial.
Gouveia's work is in the collection of di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa Valley, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Museu Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal.
—From Brandywine Workshop and Archives records
