Artbid - Auction 1337 / Lot 25

Artbid - Auction 1337 / Lot 25

MANUEL PEREIRA DA SILVA (1920-2003) (2)

Untitled

2 Lithographs on paper

One with 1967 signature and date printed

21.5 x 16 cm. (bigger)

Artbid - Auction 1340 / Lot 13

Artbid - Auction 1340 / Lot 13

MANUEL PEREIRA DA SILVA (1920-2003)

Male figure

Patinated bronze sculpture

Without signature

30 cm. (am.)

Artbid - Auction 1332 / Lot 17

Artbid - Auction 1332 / Lot 17

MANUEL PEREIRA DA SILVA (1920-2003)

Untitled

Cardboard ballpoint

Signed and dated 1978

59 x 42 cm.

II Exhibition of Modern Art of Viana do Castelo

II Exhibition of Modern Art of Viana do Castelo held by the Regional Museum of Viana do Castelo, in September 1959, this exhibition was open to the public in the following cities, in Coimbra, organized by the Academic Association Circle of Plastic Arts, in December 1959. and Caldas da Rainha, organized by the Caldense Scenic Ensemble, in January 1960, sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, planned and organized by Dr. Manuel de Sousa Oliveira.

Art even when it seems far removed from life is always its reflection, not in the sense of imitation, as the Aristotelian definition has been misinterpreted, but in the source of expressive creation.

This exhibition of modern Portuguese artists, despite the energetic care of their organization, cannot, of course, give the full picture of our art. However, it worthily illustrates the transformation that has taken place, especially in the last decade, into the European success of our step. And it will certainly have provided interested visitors with familiarizing themselves with not only the characteristic aspects of today's art but also some of the most representative names in the new ranks of Lisbon and Porto. Manuel Pereira da Silva is one of 37 artists present, with two sculptures and two paintings.

Project Competition for the D. Henrique Monument in Sagres

Project Competition for the D. Henrique Monument in Sagres, Lisbon (1957).

The Executive Committee of the Commemorations of the Fifth Centenary of the death of Infante D. Henrique decided to bring together in this publication the fundamental elements of the contest for the monument that should be built in Sagres.

Such a large number of projects - 22 of Portuguese and 27 foreign authors - is a tribute to the memory of Infante and will be documentary of the interest of national and foreign artists, for the figure and work of the genius initiator of the Discoveries.

Under the Motto: Scorpio; Manuel Pereira da Silva participated in collaboration with Architect Carlos Neves, Architect José Márcio de Freitas, Engineer Armando Santos Paupério and Engineer Manuel O. Dias Lopes.

Artistic Technical Education in Oporto

Soares dos Reis School Of Decorative Arts

Artistic Technical Education in Oporto

During the New State (1948-1973)

Francisco Perfeito Caetano

Ed University of Oporto

(2012)

ISBN 978-989-8265-87-6

The current Soares dos Reis Artistic School was officially created in January 1884 and was designated at that time as the Guimarães do Bonfim Industrial Design School of Faria. Its activity began a year later in precarious installations of a residential building in Campo 24 de Agosto.

In 1917, the school is ordered to be evicted and occupies the former premises of the Lyceum Alexandre Herculano, on Rua de Santo Ildefonso.

In 1927 the purchase of an old hat factory at 49 Firmeza Street is authorized. In 1931 a qualification course for the School of Fine Arts is created. The School gives courses in chisel, steel engraver, woodworker, goldsmith, fashion designer, debux weaver, carver among others.

From 1948, the School, now called the Soares dos Reis School of Decorative Arts, began to offer specialized courses of artistic nature - Decorative Painting, Decorative Sculpture, Decorative Ceramics, Artistic Furniture, Chisel and, among others, the Graphic Arts. With the reform of secondary education in 1972/73, General and Complementary Visual Arts Courses are introduced, including Fabric Arts, Equipment and Decoration, Fire Arts, Graphic Arts and Imaging.

In 2008, 124 years after its foundation, the so-called Soares dos Reis Artistic School finally moves to a new building on Major David Magno Street, where the Oliveira Martins Secondary School used to be. Worked by the public company Parque Escolar, the building is designed by architect Carlos Prata and is part of the pilot phase of the project for the rehabilitation of the national public secondary school. Keeping the facade of the old school, the entire interior is renovated or redeveloped to receive the Specialized Artistic Courses created in 2004.

Maintaining its educational project that consists of an excellent artistic teaching that combines the requirement in general education with the professionalism and passion placed in technical and artistic training, Soares dos Reis is today a reference educational institution in the city of Oporto and in the country. The team of highly trained teachers combines youth and experience in a rare mix that is a recipe for success, today complemented by the best arts facilities in the country.

Bearing in mind the importance of being an internship (internship center) for an institution such as the Soares dos Reis School, and having internship teachers within it, we consider relevant to mention here the names and classifications of the 5th group interns, contained in the book of minutes for “classification of trainee teachers” corresponding to the 1st and 2nd year of internship. They are Mario Truta, 14 and 15 values ​​(1952-1953); Manuel Pereira da Silva, 15 and 17 values ​​(1966-1967); among many other trainee teachers.

Some of the teachers at the Soares dos Reis School had a profound impact on the national art scene, among them Sousa Caldas, Mário Truta and Manuel Pereira da Silva.

After an I Exhibition, in the premises of the School of Fine Arts of Oporto, with sculptures (refer to our choice, only the sculptors) by Altino Maia, Mario Truta, Arlindo Rocha, Serafim Teixeira, Augusto Tavares and Manuel Pereira da Silva , the independent exhibitions take place outside the school and several times outside Oporto. It is a first example of decentralization and willingness to diffuse that, despite everything, will not prevent some marginalization of the artists of Porto in relation to events and initiatives of greater visibility and impact on the capital.

Much more important was the First Exhibition of Independents in April 1943. Portuguese abstract art is historically linked to independent exhibitions whose main organizer and animator, Fernando Lanhas, is coincidentally the central figure of this abstractionism.

The II Independent Exhibition is presented, in February 1944, at Oporto Commercial Athenaeum, with sculptures by Altino Maia, Arlindo Rocha, Eduardo Tavares, Joaquim Meireles Manuel da Cunha Monteiro, Maria Graciosa de Carvalho, Mário Truta, M. Félix de Brito, Manuel Pereira da Silva and Serafim Teixeira. It will be from there that the action of Fernando Lanhas will be felt, in the consistent quality of catalogs and exhibitions, as well as the persistence in keeping the initiatives alive.

The III Independent Exhibition takes place, in the same year, in the hall of the Oporto Coliseum, with sculptures by Abel Salazar, Altino Maia, Antonio Azevedo, Arlindo Rocha, Eduardo Tavares, Henrique Moreira, Manuel Pereira da Silva, Mario Truta and Sousa Caldas.

In the catalog of the exhibition, traveling through Coimbra, Leiria and Lisbon, in 1945, it is clear that the name of “independent” is not a random name, but implies the awareness that art is a heritage of humanity and hence “ our varied presence ”, given that the present must be activated to reach the future, and the past cannot be denied the right to remember.

For Fernando Lanhas the “Independent Exhibitions” of Oporto mark a significant historical moment in our painting and sculpture. Firstly, they bring together painters and sculptors of different backgrounds (the raison d'être of the independent word comes from non-affiliation with a particular “ism”), engaged in the same collective action and immersed in the same enthusiasm. Second, because in them there appears, without prejudice or complex, this original and fruitful abstraction. And third, because they escape the centralizing voracity of the capital.

The Story Behind the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

Grant’s Last Battle

The Story Behind the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

Emerging Civil War Series

By Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White

SB – Savas Beatie

California

(2015)

ISBN-13: 978-1-61121-160-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015943486

Guinea-Bissau, Africa (circa 1956)

This standing sculpture of Grant as presidente was commissioned in recognition of Grant’s 1870 arbitration of a dispute between Portugal and Great Britain over the former colony. The Portuguese government commissioned sculptor Manuel Pereira da Silva to create the monument, which was erected in the main square of Guinea-Bissau’s capital city, Bissau. It later survived the wave of destruction that destroyed many of the other monuments representing the nation’s colonial past. In August 2007, however, the Grant sculpture disappeared and was discovered in pieces, probably for use as scrap metal. Police were able to recover all of the pieces except Grant’s head, but they still hope to recover that piece and reassemble the statue.

The Gaia Art School

Laura Castro
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.

The Oporto School of Fine Arts

Following his visit to the Faria de Guimarães Industrial School, Arlindo Rocha started the Special Sculpture Course at the Oporto School of Fine Arts, at a time when teaching in Fine Arts implied an initial formation, based on the values of drawing, providing After four years of intensive copy design classes, students begin the study of modeling, also by copying the former; soon after completing the Special Course, Arlindo competes for the Higher Sculpture Course at the same school. Accompanying a teaching reform, which aimed to modernize it, Arlindo Rocha was a student of teachers such as Rodolfo Pinto do Couto, Carlos Ramos, Dódio Gomes and Joaquim Lopes.

At this time, the responsible for the discipline of Sculpture is Rodolfo Pinto do Couto (1888-1945); As a disciple of Teixeira Lopes, Pinto do Couto was, as a painter and sculptor, a faithful follower of the teaching of classical norms, presenting as a program for the Sculpture course a thorough study of the human figure, continuing the School of his Master, which would come from Soares dos Reis.

For five years, students responded to various exercises in copying the old models, modeling small figurines in clay, which over the course evolved into larger exercises. The clay, with its great plasticity, offers little resistance to the movement of the hand, free of great care or of great utensils to be worked, becoming the matter of choice for sculpture studies, allowing a gradual evolution in the work of imitation of natural referents. This material, capable of satisfying the two most important conditions for a sculptor - to be subject to all forms that need to be given and to preserve these forms in almost unalterable way - becoming the material of choice for sculpture studies, also allowing performing small, medium and large scale exercises.

The learning of the human body began with studies that began by copying fragments of human body heads and ends in plaster, portrayed in a first phase, in relief exercises, where students aimed to deepen the mastery of apparent contours and volumes. illusory ones whose concern was mostly on the frontal view of the relief, and the student could later evolve into figures of round shape, in which the study of profiles is more in-depth. From the observation and representation of the detail, the students came to the composition of the complete figure at the end of the course, in addition to the copies of the old plaster models, and only in the third year, the study of the living model was introduced, thus providing the students. full mastery of the representation of the forms of the real. In sculpture, the most common definitive materials are stone and bronze, although industrial or alternative materials considered as poor materials are being introduced at this time.

The delay in the search for so-called modern materials for sculpture is related, on the one hand, to the fact that Portugal is "closed" to the developments in Europe, and, on the other, to the absence of technological disciplines. at the Fine Art Schools. Following the program model identical to that of the French and Italian schools, it was not for the Academy to pass on knowledge of sculpture technologies such as stone, wood or foundry. We can say that the sculpture was taken only as modeling.

The major concern would be to induce students in theoretical subjects such as Composition, leaving aside the techniques of “reproduction”. Direct carving was not understood as a possibility of execution of the final work, but as a means or technique of reproduction of the original, modeled piece. The techniques of sculpture were therefore given to skilled professionals, who were often trained as sculptors, but who carried within themselves an ancient and familiar tradition of flowerbeds and flowerbeds, whose uses and customs endowed them with an unreachable wisdom in so few years. course at a School of Fine Arts.

The students of sculpture, after making their models in clay, followed the work of trainers, responsible for making the molds, then allowing the passage of the initial study plaster. However, plaster does not offer the same durability as a noble material; learning how to master a technology, such as the stone or the foundry process, was only possible for those who could later train in the studio of great masters, who passed on to their disciples the knowledge, technology and adapted tools that evolved at a rapid pace, making the increasingly simplified and fast work of roughing or casting, which will partly influence the tendency of synthesis and the search for a personal language of the artist.

Shortly after Pinto do Couto's death, Barata Feyo (1899-1990) takes the place of sculpture's ruler, causing a series of pedagogical changes, begun in 1949, with the aim of extending the closed academic cycle in which the teaching of sculpture was. With the creative and pedagogical action of teachers such as Carlos Ramos, Joaquim Lopes and Dórdio Gomes, students gain greater ideological tolerance, which, combined with the exhibition initiatives, which brought together teachers and students in an art considered avant-garde, they embody the attempt to modernize Porto's teaching in relation to the Lisbon school, where the values ​​and academic bases were followed, followed by Simões de Almeida, Tio and Sobrinho and later by Leopoldo de Almeida. However, the teaching of Porto can only take into account the expansion of the teaching of sculpture, which was then expanding, and which gave rise to the construction of new pavilions, which aimed to introduce students to the most varied technologies. Values ​​and theoretical disciplines remained in the same connection with classical values, only translated into modern solutions. Learning and evaluations themselves are no longer guided by modeling exercises, and students can explore and deepen new themes and problems of art that arose simultaneously with the modernist waves that were vigorously practiced abroad.

Arlindo Rocha's academic formation is involuntarily led by the paths of the "hermetic teaching of human morphology", as we can observe in his sculptures during this period, with a great classical influence, close to the Greek canon, as it is Youth case, a portrait of a colleague cast in plaster, based on a mimesis process; that is, through direct representation, where formal idealization meets the beautiful, lacking the work of elements capable of characterizing the sculptor's “style”. Interestingly, after four years, Arlindo returns to this same theme, devising another portrait also titled Youth, where he tries, in a primary way, to break free from concrete volumes that make up a human face. This time, the face is feminine, composed of faceted plans, resulting from a synthesis of shapes and volumes, providing the sculptor with a first exercise of formal liberation, affirming here the contrast of idealization compared to the first Youth, held in 1943, while still a student. at EBAP. In this work we realize that Arlindo Rocha seeks to free himself from the forms of nature as referents, starting a process of interiorization, in which he begins by idealizing the organic volumes that make up a face, as concrete volumes, through geometric planes, starting the sculptor in a a course that would later demonstrate a formal and abstract statement of sculpture.

Arlindo Rocha claims to have started to learn sculpture when they stopped teaching him, not because he despised his academic background, but because he was interested early on in the possibility of dematerialization of sculpture, thus seeking new answers to a sculptural practice never explored before. Portugal. This personal research would, however, be hampered either by 'the long stage around objects only seen' or by the 'climate of complete stagnation and utter lack of information which the students sought to break with their own initiatives'.

Arlindo Rocha did his end-of-course work only in 1951, where he presents, for evaluation, an allusive relief to the death of Antonio Francisco Ferreira da Silva Porto (1818-1890). It was a bas-relief, which would be an integral part of the Monument to Silva Porto - The Pioneer, which Arlindo, along with the architect Vasco Vieira, was developing to build in the city of Silva Porto, Bié.

Due to the dimensions of his final work, Arlindo Rocha requires the Director of the School of Fine Arts of Porto to make the relief in the studio where he worked until 1956. It was the studio of the sculptor Henrique Moreira (1890-1979), installed at the back of the building. Jardim Arnaldo Gama, which Arlindo shared with his friend Manuel Pereira da Silva (1920-2003). With a path within a realistic aesthetic, Henrique Moreira was also a sculptor of the old school, whose academic modeling is completely visible in his works, particularly those that resulted in foundry, but that leaves a certain influence of Art Deco, when he carves it. stone, in particular the female figures. We cannot, therefore, say that Henrique Moreira transmitted to Arlindo any characteristic of his way of thinking or making sculpture. However, it would be interesting to study the experience of the sculptor Henrique Moreira with his disciples, since, despite his obvious admiration for classical language, this interaction seems to have left an impressive imprint on the two disciples who, in a different way, dedicated themselves looking for a personal language, within an abstracting language.

In the photo we can see Arlindo Rocha from the front and Manuel Pereira da Silva from the back, in the studio of Henrique Moreira.

Obtaining the final grade of 17 values, this final work brings together the classic composition and idealization, with a more synthesized conception, which reminds us a little of the work of his studio colleague, Manuel Pereira da Silva. With the utmost simplicity and resulting from a long process of synthesis, the honoree is represented without clothes, wrapped only in a flag, showing the biographical note of the death of Silva Porto. The body and flag are a contrast of absolute light and dark, for work almost without volumetric modeling, resembling an incision of design in the granite itself. The end result, we may consider, is in line with contemporary work for its time, since it is not based on modeling, but on straightforward design, in which only two scale models were previously performed. By creating planes and cutting lines, dug deep into the stone, Arlindo obtains the necessary contrasts to perceive his theme, thus not having to worry about passing light between organic volumes, which slightly enhances the appearance. This relief, which approaches the personal language of the artist, was affirmed in two distinct fields of sculpture, one more figurative and the other devoid of figuration, the one closest to a formal schematism and antithesis.

In a medium where the news about the main figures of Contemporary Art were scarce, it was worth to these young people to share, among their gatherings, their personal experiences during trips or even the exchange of international magazines, rare at the time, which makes the echoes of modernism in Portugal are of great importance. The young students sought to know the new values of art that was made and lived abroad. In this Oporto generation there are several names, which would constitute a particular group: Fernando Lanhas, Nadir Afonso, Arlindo Rocha, Fernando Fernandes, Amandio Silva, Manuel Pereira da Silva, Altino Maia, Eduardo Tavares, among others. These are young students from the Porto School of Fine Arts, who held a series of Independent exhibitions, thus expressing a desire for cultural decentralization, in addition to the initiatives of greater visibility and impact that took place almost exclusively in the capital.

n 1943, this group of students from the Porto School decided to unite against the large exhibition centers that were almost exclusively held in the capital. With the name of Independente, the first exhibition takes place at the premises of the Porto School of Fine Arts, with the almost exclusive presence of students.

Fernando Lanhas presents, in the Independents, his first abstract experiences, even suggesting to his colleagues the experimentation of the vast field of abstraction. At the same time that Lanhas shows his abstract paintings, Arlindo Rocha, who at the time signed as Arlindo Gonçalves, presents his first abstracting experiences in the field of sculpture.

The group expands early, opening doors to teachers or artists who demonstrate a willingness to pursue this desire for cultural decentralization through various initiatives in which the refusal to affiliate a style is evident.

The Independent Exhibitions assume fair value, as they constitute a first collective action at the time, even though not structured under a defined vanguard, inaugurates an innovative dialogue in the field of Portuguese art, providing favorable conditions for the emergence and development of the abstracting trend.

Ana Luisa Oliveira

MASTER IN PUBLIC SCULPTURE

Sculpture in Portugal in the first half of the XX century

The beginning of the XX century in Portugal was marked by an unstable period due to the successive fall and possession of governments during the First Republic (1910-1926). Portuguese society was far from obtaining the necessary conditions for cultural and ideological development, advancing, at a fast pace, to a rhythm that felt between Portuguese art and art realized outside the country.

The academies remained closed, maintaining the same teaching regime, valuing and continuing the classic system, where the concrete representation of the real, obtained through a copy process, is the greatest concern of the artists. The raw materials of choice remain the most traditional. In painting, the oil; In sculpture, clay is the favorite material for modeling, later passed on to a definitive material. Meanwhile, outside the new materials and technologies arouse the plastic interest of artists, contributing to the emergence of new technologies and artistic typologies, such as the introduction of iron, aluminum, stainless steel, resins and ceramics or wood agglomerates, to which followed the new avant-garde that asserted themselves against the academic tradition.

However, and partly due to experiences lived outside the national territory, we see small groups that started a modernist search with works that renounce the traditional Aristotelian aesthetics, based on mimesis, showing in their works a very personal language, a representation of the world based on a vision of its own, asserting itself as a search for a possibly truer reality that the artist would find within himself and not in the ordinary world. Contributing to a first reflection, around the art of a more expressionist and abstract nature, the works of Santa Rita Pintor and Amadeu de Souza-Cardoso, which was joined, at a later stage, by a group of students from the Porto School, where they stand out. names like Fernando Lanhas, Nadir Afonso, Manuel Pereira da Silva and Arlindo Rocha. A renewed aesthetic and literary thought began in these small organized groups, ventured into provocative strategies in the face of conservative political and cultural practices, and in a way reactionary to modernity. Orpheu magazine, published in 1915, sought to assert a great influence on modernity, and its "avant-garde" inspired inspiring literary movements, which soon aroused the worst criticism, since they proposed a cosmopolitan art in time and space, a truly art. that would bring with it the renewal of literature and the arts in Portugal. In Presença magazine (1927-1940), we witnessed a continuity of the line of thought and intervention begun with Orpheu magazine. These magazines become a source of dissemination of new aesthetic thoughts of Portuguese authors, as well as some essays by European writers. To these editions were also added exhibitions and conferences organized to show new cultural options, almost always through private initiatives. This new cultural awakening that seemed to closely follow international artistic thinking does not get much attention from the public, since the level of literacy is very low and in urban environments intellectual innovations do not take the place of the conservatism that then took place. made me feel. Portuguese society at the time was poorly culturally enlightened, remaining closed to the tastes of the old order, reinforcing the chronological and ideological mismatch between the avant-garde and the Portuguese artists. The lack of free circulation of books and information ultimately results in a lack of full awareness of the art practiced abroad.

The Estado Novo (1933-1974) became a hope against the political and economic mismanagement of Portugal due to the First Republic; To this end, the state reinforces the ideological values ​​of God, Fatherland and Family; authority, discipline and order; corporatism and Catholicism. The fine arts become the most convenient and favorable vehicle of ideological propaganda, the country being "adorned" from north to south with small and large public works resulting in rigid buildings, lined with sculpture, painting and tapestry.

This period was associated with a nationalist art, leaving a balanced and functional mark between art and power, as demonstrated by the Portuguese World Exposition in 1940. This initiative reached dimensions never before seen, having as its mission to move to the act, in the form of commemoration, public consecration and the representative legitimacy of the state at ideological and historical level. It was up to the artists to clearly convey to the public these values, also making known the mythical Portuguese characters, extolling the grandeur of the past, which was revised in the present, hoping to achieve the same impact on the future of Portugal.

The State defines an art associated with the classical system, since it would be the best way to dialogue with the Portuguese of any social class; The artist should also punctuate the work of art with small constructive notes, subtly leading it along paths that, moving towards the synthesis of the figures, later bring it closer to abstraction. As formal synthesis is part of one's personal interpretation, the pursuit of the individualization of the artist and the pursuit of the autonomy of art become increasingly conscious. An avant-garde desire for rupture that seeks in common and personal nature a reinterpretation of the world, mirrored in the work of art without direct reference to the laws of beauty of concrete reality, is once again visible.

Portugal thus reaches a period, as far as possible, stable, where the power of the Estado Novo will be able to restore values, already lost, within Portuguese society, which, together with the action of national propaganda, through the support of the arts, ends up to shape society, making possible the cultural and ideological openness that was in great time lag with Europe. If in the opinion of some authors, the Estado Novo gives rise to social crises due to censorship and the imposition of official styles that cause some delay in the cultural development of the country, others see this period as golden, in the sense that, in the cultural context and, in For the most part, due to the work of Antonio Ferro, the government becomes an organized structure, almost as a propaganda machine for national heroic values, thus allowing the development of fine arts, regularly subsidized in an exorbitant manner. The power of the Estado Novo is transmitted to the population through its majestic work, thus making the country gain from curious examples of state-novice architecture and, in addition, the arts at the service of the state, such as sculpture, painting. , tapestry among others.

The importance and decisive action of the artistic vanguards and the necessity of their moments of rupture are therefore to value: «[the] social function of the artist in perfecting or inventing what he came to call" languages ​​"creates conditions of awareness »of the political and social context of the time in which he lived.

In the artistic realm, the 'restrained and quiet revolution' emerged more grounded around 1945. Neorealism, Surrealism and Abstractionism are practiced in a very contained manner, accompanied by violent polemics until the mid-1950s. However, this will not be an impediment to the realization. Independent Exhibitions, or for the inauguration of the first abstract sculpture acquired by the State for a public space. Modern artists explore these new plastic languages, opposed to classical language, in the midst of a struggle for ethical and aesthetic values, before a society that, as we have seen, was not prepared to accompany them.

In this same period, there is one of the great moments of Portuguese cultural history of modern times. The rediscovery of Fernando Pessoa's work, hitherto unknown to most citizens. This author's work soon turned out to be of great interest to the national arts, allowing for the return of the lost rhythm at the beginning of the century of the first modernist manifestations, also exalted with the rediscovery of the works of Santa Rita and Amadeu, which, as we have seen, marked the first generation of modernity, which will remain a reference until the mid-1940s, as we shall see.

Ana Luisa Oliveira

MASTER IN PUBLIC SCULPTURE