Little is known about Jaime Fernandes’ life. A small landowner, he married at 22 and had five children. At the age of 38, he was institutionalized for schizophrenia at the Miguel Bombarda Psychiatric Asylum in Lisbon, nearly three hundred kilometers from his home. Twenty-eight years later, he began drawing.
Fernandes’ figures are composed of numerous lines executed with ballpoint pen, ink, or pencil, in a restrained chromatic palette.vPrimarily representing humans and animals, his silent figures sometimes merge into composite beings, alternately zoomorphic or anthropomorphic, yet always characterized by great simplicity. Upon his death, Fernandes’ medical records and most of his drawings were destroyed by hospital authorities, though a few sets have survived.