Ricardo Cruzes was born in France. He graduated in Painting by ARCA-EUAC (Portugal - Coimbra), where he was a student of Armando Azevedo, João Dixo and Antonio Modesto. He soon became an entrepreneur, and co-founder of the companies Design ao Vivo and Moonshapes, working on the design, management, and production of creative projects covering the multi-disciplines of design. Clients such as J. Walter Thompson, Santander Bank, Portuguese Institute of Museums, BP - British Petroleum, Montez Champalimaud, among others, are part of his portfolio. Guest speaker by the National Museum of Archeology within the scope of the implementation of the Museum website developed by his company and awarded by UNESCO (1st place - Museums and patrimony category).
Co-founder of software/startup Proppy CRM, recently rebranded to Casafari CRM by merger/acquisition by the multinational Casafari. In 2018 he is a founding member of the Algarve Evolution – Algarve Tech Hub association.
Intensification of artistic activity since 2008 with public demonstrations from 2009. Resident artist at LAC - Laboratory of Creative Activities, in Lagos, where has been working as a full-time artist since 2021.
Ricardo Cruzes' work portrays and illustrates tense, passionate, ironic, and often autobiographical states of the soul that come to life through the conversation between the artist and his work, where established reasons, social theories, and various missions are discussed. Landscapes and characters that balance on the line that separates the abstract from the figurative, move and transform from piece to piece, from narrative to narrative, they are questions and answers, internal messages that materialize in pieces finished and started in continuity. Dialogues where the two parties assume each other by the contrast of the formal approach, by the being rational, enterprising, and critical, in contrast to the primitive, expressive, and childish being. In an attitude of constant observation and questioning, the artist refuses to create in just one way, saying no to career formal coherences, being more concerned with solving, without concluding objectively, at every moment, the existential discussions that he promotes with himself, excavating experimentally, with different tools, the chapters of an infinite novel. The intensity with which he works reveals a permanent dissatisfaction, which demonstrates always care for his other, without fear of losing himself. As in any relationship, trust and maturity grow, but nothing is taken for granted, not least because the artist never stops analyzing what surrounds him, bringing contemporaneity to the questions he asks, and to the silent answer of his other. Ricardo Cruzes is a multi-disciplinary artist who explores painting, drawing, writing, installation, sound design, video, and photography. He sees being an artist in a perspective of experimental travel, where stages are measured by restarts, where form serves the concept, but also determines it when this suggestion comes from his other.
