Paulo Varela Gomes posthumously honoured with Medal of Cultural Merit

Award

August 2017

The Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra's Executive Board welcomes the posthumous award of the Medal of Cultural Merit granted to Paulo Varela Gomes, by the Portuguese Minister of Culture.

Deceased April 30, 2016, Paulo Varela Gomes was a critic, university professor, art and architecture historian and former researcher of this research centre. Considered one of the most significant current Portuguese authors and art historians, his extraordinary work ranges from Architect to historian, to critic and disseminator.

In this sense, it can be read in Dispatch no. 6820/2017 of the Diário da República no. 152/2017, Series II of 2017-08-08, which officializes this distinction, in view of the «remarkable contribution towards the dissemination of Portuguese art and architecture history in various parts of the world, contributing to the strengthening of the effective cultural relations between Portugal and the Republic of India and on the occasion of the official visit of Prime Minister António Costa to the Republic of India In January 2017». It is worth recollecting that the award was given by the Prime Minister during his state visit to India in a public ceremony held at the Delegation of the East Foundation in Goa on 12 January.

His determined work and the work he left, resulting, for instance, from his relationship with the East, more precisely with Goa, would prove to be seminal in many of his intellectual inflexions developed within the framework of CES, constituting an inescapable legacy, which will mark the universe of Portuguese historiography.