A Portuguese painter born in Madeira in 1930, Lourdes Castro studied painting at the Beaux-Arts in Lisbon from 1950 to 1956. Married to artist René Bertholo, she moved to Paris in 1958 and founded the experimental magazine KWY (1958- 1964) with Portuguese artists António Costa Pinheiro, Gonçalo Duarte, José Escada and João Vieira. His project was joined by Christo, Jan Voss and others.

A multidisciplinary artist, her work includes decoupage, collage, sewing, embroidery and writing. Inspired by Surrealism and the New Realists, Castro moves away from lyrical abstraction.Her interest in the play of shadows is apparent when she seeks to capture the projected silhouettes of people around her, either painted on Plexiglas, or cut out or embroidered on sheets. A style that aims to confront the object and its double, or even to direct the artist towards a dematerialization of the object.