Sculptor Manuel Pereira da Silva: 20th century Post-war European figuration

Tuesday, May 07, 2024

20th century Post-war European figuration

In the central years of the century. XX, despite the followers of European informalisms claiming texture and irregularity, the new figurative languages configure an image of contemporary man through new standards of expressive freedom.

Lucian Freud

Portrait of a Man (Baron H.H. Thyssen-Bornemisza)

1981 - 1982

Oil on canvas. 51 x 40 cm

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Manuel Pereira da Silva

Retrato do pintor Reis Teixeira

1958

Óleo sobre tela, 54 x 42 cm

The human being was the essential subject for the British Lucian Freud or Henry Moore, in Portugal Manuel Pereira da Silva followed this trend, which combined the figurative with a plastic language close to the abstraction of matter.

Henry Moore

Duas Mães com os filhos nos braços

1941

Esferográfica, lápis e aguarela em papel. 38 x 56.4 cm

Museu Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Manuel Pereira da Silva

Mãe com o filho nos braços

1955

Aguarela sobre cartolina, 29 x 39 cm

Manuel Pereira da Silva

Mães com os filhos nos braços

1962

Óleo sobre cartolina, 50 x 32 cm

Manuel Pereira da Silva

Mulher com criança nos braços

1952

Gesso sobre estrutura de alumínio, 31 x 32 x 55 cm

Other artists, marked by a feeling of pessimism and anxiety caused by the crises of the two wars, impose a new sense of alienation from the body. It is represented distorted and injured, as occurs in Francis Bacon's inhuman characters or disintegrated, like Alberto Giacometti's evanescent figures.