To look at the paintings of Luís Soares is to feel many different vibrations, sense many different messages in the creations of this Portuguese painter, born in Mozambique in 1952 at a time when the changes in artistic interpretation in Europe and the whole world were laying the foundations for a new and vigorous interpretation of art in general.

The great masters of Impressionism discovered one day that in addition to the air that filled their studios there also existed the light and the raw force of nature. They then sought direct sensations, the different aspects of light in their attempts to mould something more real and break new ground in artistic creation. With its poetry, its musicality and its voices which speak phrases as strange as they are full of warmth and humanity, Luís Soares' work certainly brings us something new. His hybrid creations lie somewhere between cubism and expressionism and convey to us, via excellent technique and use of the palette, the strength and power of mankind at one with creation in its attainment of a serener existence.

Though Soares' figures can sometimes appear dramatic, closer examination of the vigour with which their human intimacies and frailties are depicted reveals the same vision which has achieved so much in ceramics and sculpture as well as painting - the medium in which Soares has created a tense in which the present fuses with a future full of sensations and realities which strike a chord with those who, like Soares, have their own notion of the Universe and the essence of supernatural power.

Contemplating the work of Luís Soares, I cannot help imagining how it would look on large-scale murals, how it would flood the streets, avenues and squares of the city with its festive and joyful colourfulness... or in stained glass windows, filtering the light to create evocative and tranquil interior spaces.

Soares' uninhibited use of visual language confronts us with concrete proposals and reasoned dialogue which bring us, through the mere contemplation of his work, closer to the concept of Art.