António Leopoldo de Almeida (Lisbon, October 18th, 1898 - April 28th, 1975), enrolled at the School of Fine Arts at the tender age of 15, in 1913, after revealing talent for drawing and clay modelling. In 1916 he starts the Special Course in Sculpture where he became a disciple of painter Luciano Freire and sculptor Simões de Almeida, with whom he learned the virtuosity of the technique of modelling and became part of a whole generation of artists who would mark national Modernism. His training and learning were structured on the basis of Classicism with academic roots and a very sharp taste for Greek canons. Throughout half a century of intense activity he become one of the most remarkable figures of Portuguese sculpture of the twentieth century, and particularly one of the best expressions of the modernizing official statuary implemented by the New State, contributing with a vast body of work made up of portraits, busts, bas-reliefs, statues and monuments of historical figures and national culture figures, having been awarded the Soares dos Reis Prize in 1940.
