CATARINA MANTERO

Catarina Mantero (b. 1988, Lisbon, PT) is a contemporary visual artist based in Lisbon. For her, painting is as much about adding as it is about subtracting. Her work explores the body, water, and memory through images that move between figuration and abstraction.

​

Working with oil, acrylic, and reclaimed materials, she builds her paintings through layers of painting, sanding, drawing, gluing, scratching, and printing. Each work becomes both image and archive, balancing control with chaos, where impulse, erasure, and revision leave their traces beneath the surface. The process of making is inseparable from the search for meaning.

__________________________________________
 

​
Biography

Mantero is classically trained, with an MFA from the New York Academy of Art (2017) and a BFA from the Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa. During her time in New York, she received two Academy Scholar Awards and the Sam & Adele Golden Foundation Award. Following her graduation, she was invited to teach Art & Culture at the New York Academy of Art and was awarded a teaching residency at the Parsons-affiliated school in Altos de Chavón, Dominican Republic. She has exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions across New York, Paris, Munich, and Lisbon, including three editions of Take Home a Nude at Sotheby's, New York.

Mantero's work has been featured in Público, Artspace, Visão, and Time Out. In 2022, she founded Galeria Belard, and in 2025 Art Basel featured her in its coverage of Lisbon's new generation of artists and galleries.