Pancho Guedes, Portuguese architect and artist, Died at 90

  Artists

Pancho Guedes was born Amâncio d’Alpoim Miranda Guedes in 1925, and died on November 7, 2015.

He was a Portuguese architect, sculptor, and painter.

An archetype Eclectic Modernist born in Lisbon, Portugal, he spent much of his life in Portuguese Mozambique from when he was 7 years old.

In East Africa, Pancho produced the designs for hundreds of buildings, many of them in the city of Lourenço Marques (Maputo).

Pancho was part of “Team 10”, a group of architects who assembled in July 1953 at the 9th Congress of CIAM and adopted a new approach to urbanism.

Aside from his large-scale architectural projects, he is also a sculptor and painter who has exhibitions include at the Berardo Collection Museum in Lisbon.

After the events of the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon, Pancho left newly independent Mozambique in 1974.

Mozambique was officially established in 1975 as the People’s Republic of Mozambique.

His rapid departure from Mozambique in 1974 along with other Portuguese subject to the 24/20 declaration (giving them 24 hours to leave and allowing them to take 20 kilograms of belongings) left his family almost penniless.

Due to his reputation, Pancho received an invitation to take the vacant chair of Architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

Pancho passed away at age 90 In November 2015.