The Gaia Art School
Speaking of artists from Gaia in the period between the 1960s and the 1920s, the panorama is almost necessarily reduced to sculpture.
From the School of Sculptors of Gaia has begun to speak insistently since António Arroio, in 1909, used the expression to characterize the core of sculptors who were born or worked in Gaia, especially from the figure of Soares dos Reis. It is with José Joaquim Teixeira Lopes (1837-1918), and by way of preamble, that the story of the sculptors of Gaia begins. Only after the introit that represented his performance can a first generation be defined by the name of Soares dos Reis (1847-1889), followed by a group of sculptors born in the 60s: Joaquim Gonçalves da Silva (1865- 1912), José Fernandes Caldas (1866-1923), António Teixeira Lopes (1866-1942), Augusto Santo (1869-1907), these two last disciples of Soares dos Reis, to which António Fernandes de Sá, from following decade (1875-1959). Contemporary of this nucleus is the painter Manuel Maria Lúcio (1865-1943). Finally a set of sculptors born in the 80's and 90's, with numerous presence of disciples of Teixeira Lopes: José de Oliveira Ferreira (1883-1942), António Alves de Sousa (1884-1922), Diogo de Macedo (1889-1959) ), António Azevedo (1889-1968), Zeferino Couto (1890-), Henrique Moreira (1890-1979), Jose Fernandes Sousa Caldas (1894-1965), Adolfo Marques (1894-1960). Contemporary in this nucleus, the painter Joaquim Lopes (1886-1956) and the architect Francisco Oliveira Ferreira (1884-1957) stand out.
Soares dos Reis returns from Paris and Rome in 1872. It will take thirteen years to see Teixeira Lopes leave for the French capital. And when Teixeira Lopes prepares to enter the Academy (1901) and Fernandes de Sá, even at the turn of the century, succeeds in Paris (1896-1901), Oliveira Ferreira and Alves de Sousa still study in the Fine Arts of Porto, finishing the Finally, when Alves de Sousa is a pensioner in Paris and Oliveira Ferreira reaches the end of his fellowship period, António de Azevedo, Sousa Caldas, Henrique Moreira, Diogo de Macedo and Zeferino Couto (1911) finish their course. A few years separate the formation of these sculptors, whose activity would intersect on several occasions. It is necessary to clarify in this regard “artists of Gaia” that the question of naturalness does not seem decisive to me in the definition of vocations and formations, being even a little legitimate criterion to ascertain generations of artists and their dominant tendencies or even to organize, solely on the basis of an exhibition or study. The twentieth century has sharply diluted the question of artistic geography that imposed schools by countries or regions. In contemporary times, and with a few exceptions, the term "homeland" has no great meaning when we speak of fine arts. Therefore, this frontier is a pretext to face a group of artists who lived and developed their activity from Vila Nova de Gaia. Some of the representatives of this “Escola de Gaia” come from other parts of the country: José Joaquim Teixeira Lopes is from S. Mamede de Riba Tua.
To emphasize this idea it should be noted that if most are from Gaia, almost all worked in Porto and Porto. In other words, in Gaia one meditates, conceives, produces; In Porto, the work is completed, implemented in a public place, the play and its author perpetuated. Porto and Gaia have always maintained these close relations, because if the workshops and workshops existed in Gaia, it was in Porto that the training was fulfilled. After all, this group of artists only took advantage of the market conditions offered by the neighboring city. And this was also where the exhibition venues were located: Athenaeum, Mercy, Crystal Palace, Trade Association Courtyard (the favorite place by Teixeira Lopes, according to her memoirs) Salão Silva Porto.
Even in relation to the workshops that the sculptors kept, some were located in Porto: Fernandes de Sá worked in R. Álvares Cabral (Bertino Daciano, 1949), Joaquim Gonçalves worked in a religious sculpture workshop in R. da Fábrica (Romero Vila, 1964) and Henrique Moreira at Largo Actor Dias. The most paradigmatic case of this situation is that of Henrique Moreira, born in Gaia and who decisively marked the image of the city of Porto, in terms of public statuary.
In the same order of ideas, but of inverse reason, are the brothers Oliveira Ferreira - architect and sculptor - born in Porto, but with a workshop in Gaia, and with a fundamental part of his work developed here.
Forcing the scheme to adapt to the available examples, others could be added, such as Eduardo Tavares, born in S. João da Pesqueira, professor at the School of Fine Arts of Porto and who kept his workshop at the Soares dos Reis workshop, already in a phase most advanced of our century.
It proves enough of the appetite for this land and its emblematic figures, and the ability to provide some continuity to the movement born in the nineteenth century. In spite of all the criteria contained, it should be acknowledged that there is a very reasonable number of sculptors in Gaia who dominated part of the artistic activity, commissions and exhibitions at the turn of the century. The causes, if not developed in this approach, cannot be ignored by it either. Reasons such as the proliferation of workshops of barists, flowerbeds, smelters have often been adduced; the tradition of the wooden imaginary; the existence of ceramic factories; the making of bow figures for the boats at the Gaia shipyards.
But the reverse movement will also be true, judging by the words of another author who considers that Teixeira Lopes' religious images - such as Santa Isabel's - exerted influence on the art of popular Santeiros (António Arroio, 1909). All these factors, albeit indirectly, have contributed to an enabling environment for artistic creation and decoration; set up an atmosphere used to living with these areas as productive activities, giving it a utilitarian and intervening sense; they generated habituation to three-dimensionality, to modeling, in finished forms ready to be placed on the front of a façade, the decoration of a façade, the ornamental set of a fountain, a garden. It is in this sense that Ramalho Ortigão discusses the superiority of sculpture, based on the fact that “sculptors must be submissively, obligatorily, workers (…) indispensably (…) flowerbeds, founders, chisels, baristas or carvers” (Ramalho Ortigão, 1905).
In this vein, carefully read the considerations of another critic who is strangely uninterested in sculpture because, recognizing that it is more difficult than painting, it is also “less abstract. It deals with form in all its truth (…). No convention has the sculptor, it presents the real form that its conception created. ... Crowds pass almost always impassively before the realities of marble or bronze to run enthusiastically to the conventional seductions of color images. ” And in another step: “It is a pity because it is the art that best does the artistic education of a people, because instead of always hiding in the enclosed buildings, it is in the full and free light of the squares and gardens that the best of its wonders. ”(Ribeiro Artur, 1896).
The critical consciousness of the time in relation to sculpture also reveals: “It is the expression of art that in Portugal describes the most complete line of uninterrupted evolution, from the first coeval architectural monuments of the founding of nationality to the present day”. He goes on to say: "We cannot, therefore, say, in the nineteenth century, as admirable sculptors as Soares dos Reis, as Teixeira Lopes was, that in their race there was no powerful artistic sap from which they flourished." (Ramalho Ortigão, 1905).
Either of the two authors cited worked and exerted critical activity in the face of the movement of sculptors that was generated in Gaia and the fact that they emphasize this art its more workshop side and its more concrete facet, seems to give me a very correct understanding as to to the interest devoted to sculpture in that village. All this argument finds correspondence in the conception that "sculpture is concerned with the body and the painting of the soul" (António Arroio, 1899).
A very particular case of the relationship between the type of workshops referred to and sculpture is that of Adolfo Marques. The son of a woodcarver of the same name, he developed, from the family tradition of woodworking, a set of small images celebrated as “stick figures”. The pieces made using walnut as the predominant material are small and have an invoice that crosses a representative view with constructive features, making them hard and faceted. They betray the initial family learning, but also a willingness to take new paths that would have been deepened, other than the dropout of the School of Fine Arts attended until the fourth year. And it is impossible not to see in these “dolls”, of blacksmiths, sweepers, figures of procession, others reading the fate, of old sitting, of popular musicians, of D. Quixote and so many of literary cut, a nod of the figures. of Teixeira Lopes (Pai) ceramics, in the inventory of professions and popular activities. Very poorly known, these sculptures by Adolfo Marques prove the aforementioned influence and continuity of the production of clay, ceramics and woodwork.
Another case is that of Sousa Caldas who began to live with the statuary made by his father - José Fernandes Caldas - author of numerous religious images, of which the most famous were destined to the Chapel of Bragas, in Porto, and others in Brazil. , where he settled after the establishment of the Republic, where he died. Without being able to establish a direct link between the works of Fernandes Caldas and those of his son, in terms of plastic results, it is inevitable to admit a link between the activities they both chose.
A third figure is that of Fernandes de Sá, whose father had a marble workshop, which allowed the sculptor to convey a taste for the materials he would later use.
Diogo de Macedo started his sculpture from his contact with Fernandes Caldas's workshop, where he learned how to draw, model and sculpt wood.
Finally, in his memoirs, Teixeira Lopes tells how he began by making the glass eyes with which he supplied the clay pots and figures, providing fairs and pilgrimages.
From the activity of these generations, Gaia conserves three symbolic buildings: the studio of Soares dos Reis; the Teixeira Lopes House Museum, the sculptor's studio to which the Galleries Diogo de Macedo later joined; Oliveira Ferreira's studio in Miramar. Buildings that, in their troubled existence, also tell stories of the artists associated with them.
Soares dos Reis's studio was always an objective of the sculptor's defenders who proposed its acquisition by Câmara de Gaia, in more or less organized movements from the 10's (Joaquim Antunes, 1990). It was acquired by the industrialist Manuel Pinto de Azevedo in 1938 and he was bequeathed to the School of Fine Arts of Porto in 1947. In this process, the pressure exerted by Joaquim Lopes, in the image of what he was doing in favor of a home workshop António Carneiro.
The Teixeira Lopes House Museum results from the studio founded in 1895 by the sculptor and designed by his architect brother, José Teixeira Lopes. In 1932 is donated with all its filling to the City Hall of Gaia being the sculptor as its conservator and receiving a monthly pension for life. To this space was associated the name of Diogo de Macedo to which was also dedicated an exhibition space of his works and his collection, which the Chamber took office in 1971, having been repeated the formula of a pension to receive in this case by the artist's widow.
Oliveira Ferreira's studio, where the two brothers, the sculptor and the architect, worked, was conceived by the latter, a very unequal author in his production that still reflects the eclecticism of the turn of the century, who designed, among others, the building of the City Hall of Gaia (1925), breaks radically with historicist traits at the Heliântia Clinic (1916). Oliveira Ferreira's workshop was donated to the Friends of Gaia Cultural Association (Friends of Gaia Bulletin, 12, May 1982).
With the preservation of these three buildings, with the monument to Soares dos Reis, with the bust of Henrique Moreira (by Manuel Pereira da Silva) and Teixeira Lopes (by Gustavo Bastos) Gaia is honoring his sculptors school. Going beyond the chronological scope, there would still be a set of artists to treat: José Pereira dos Santos (1902-), Manuel Teixeira Lopes (1907-) Guilherme Camarinha (1912-1994), António Sampaio (1916-1994), António Coelho de Figueiredo (1916-1991), Manuel Pereira da Silva (1920-2003), Isolino Vaz (1922-1992), Paulino Gonçalves.
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