HISTORY OF ART

PORTUGAL, FUTURISM AND AMADEO DE SOUSA CARDOSO

Amadeo Sousa Cardoso was born in Manhufe, Amarante county (North of Portugal), in 1887. He did his highschool studies in Coimbra, after that he went to Lisbon to study architectur at Academia de Belas Artes (Fine Arts Academy).

This academic projects leads him to Paris in the next year, but once there he decides to stop studies to devote all of his time to plastic arts activity. In Paris he haunts the “Free academies” and stays in contact with other portuguese artists at that time also living in that city as Francis Smith, Manuel Bentes, Alberto Cardoso, Emmerico, Eduardo Viana, etc..

However, even in a early stage he kept a certain caution and coldness with those artistis.

Among his compatriots he is well knowned by his caricatural skills, technique which he develops and since 1915 given him great praises.

His leaving to Paris is more a need than an adventure, at the same time is his first refuse to Lisbon’s intellectuality who saws him as someone trivial and clumsy.

In 1907 he definitively gives up of architecture study and carrie on with his original gift. In this way he will insistes on his caricaturist vocation improving his synthetic lines showing a true influence from the frensh newspapers, namely “L’Assiete au Beurre”, place where Leal da Camara worked and Juan Gris published his drawings.

Step by step and under the influence of an enviroment dominated by the “fauvism”, Amadeo begins to dedicate his talent to the paiting.

At the beginning his works doesn’t show anything special, just a small paintings spoted by a questionable quality.

Determined to improve his new plastic skills, he haunts the spanish Anglada Camaraba’s “atelier”.

This spanish painter have a peculiar thrilling colourful and some stylized simbolism.

That chromatic exuberance will impress Amadeo’s works and its always present through is career.

As first result of the new influence, are some landscapes of Paris surronndings in which we can easly find several naturalistics lines, subject which is the great scar of the portuguese modernism and against which Amadeo will be the first one to rise up against it, showing his displeased refusing his participation in the “Exposição Livre” (Independent Exebition) in 1911, which curator is his friend Manuel Bentes and where we can find all his portuguese friends from Paris.

However is important to mention that the “Exposição Livre” is the first collective demostration against the naturalism as rulling school in the Portuguese Art.

Through this event the artists look for an alternative and modern expression that they can not found in “Salões da Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes”(the official exebitions exebitions of the Portuguese Fine Art Academy).

That major task wasn’t achieved, reason why Amadeo renouncesto the portuguese avantgarde and makes a rejection statement about the art in Portugal: “I totally desagree wiyh my compatriots fellows walking in a late routine”, writes Amadeo to his uncle, to proced: “Here everything done is mean exception for a very few things”.

If Amadeo don’t take part in “Os Livres” (Independent Ones), he finds his own style which is not strange his friendship with Modigliani with who exhibits in 1911. Modigliani Defines the young portuguese work as “a mundane and precious style”. In fact, till that time Amadeo’s works are spoted for a certain exoticism, with a stylized graphics and a peculiar colourful where we can find the oriental influence took by Diaghilev’s “Ballets Russes”, mainly trough Golouine’s and Bakst’s sceneries and models.

Paintings like “O Salto do Coelho” (Rabbit Jump), “Pont L’Abbé”, shows this scenographic influence. In 1911 he still participate in the “XXVII Salon des Indépendents” in Paris.

In August of 1912, he publishs a luxurious album “XX Dessins” which introdution is written by Jeróme Doucet, who gives two great qualities to the works printed: “Surprising” and “Decorative”, “extremly new even after the cubism surprise”.

For the introdution writter, Amadeo’s drawings shows elegance, mistery, Imagination, emotion, poetryand simbolism, emphasizing composition exotism.

Vauxcelles, a famous opponent of “Fauves” and “Cubists” put the book on the top by writing on “Gil Blas”: “A brand new album of drawings was published and we can say that is the most amazing thing which our eyes ever saw”.

To the critic the prodigious stylized graphics reminds Greco, Cézanne, Polinesian and Asteca scultures, all in a “barbarian art but at the same time delicate, ancient, with a decadent modernism, exagerate and childish”.

Out of Portuguese art controversies, his regular presence in the “Salons”, makes that amadeo be invited by the art critic Walter Pach ( a Appollinaire’s close friend), to participate in the first modern art exibition in the United States of America in 1913, with eight paintings.

The famous “Armory Show” (an itinerant exebition that will be show in New York, Boston and Chicago), and where is showing the works of Braque, Matisse, Duchamp, Gleizes, Herbin, Segonzac and the new plastic shapes pioneers, Cézanne, Gaugin, Renoir, Seraut, Van Gohg. A.J. Eddy who later publish “Cubists and Post-Impressionism” buys three paints, and makes a specifi mention to Amadeo’s Work, namely to his “romantic felling” and his “marvellous sense”. With A.J. Eddy death the paintings will be given to the Art Institute of Chicago where we now can fin them. With this new path,

Amadeo have to go back to find his structural reasons, prove of that are the works as the “Casa do Ribeiro” (house on the stream) and the “Cozinha de Manhufe” (Manhufe’s Kitchen).

For the portuguese most famous art critic José Augusto França “Manhufe’s Kitchen” is the author’s first master-piece.

Works like “Barcos à Vela” (Salling Boats) and “Cavaleiros” (Riders), both from 1913, Amadeo finishs his journey through the cubism.

From now on his work is a way from figuration to abstract. New paintings, are a set of works that express a stongh inner search that he quickly understand. After José Augusto França these works could be classified as “purists”, althoug this expression just get its ful meaning after 1918, When Ozenfant and Jeanneret-Le Corbusier published is manifest.

To give up from cubism, the expressionism could be the inspiration source for the restless Amadeo.

That was what it happened, althoug this new way is more concerning to his nature, as we can see for the use of the violent colourful with green, blue, red and the use of a strong gesture showing an inner liberation.

Typical from this time are “As Cabeças” (Heads), “O fumador de Boquilha” (Cigar-Holder Smooker), “Luto-Cabeça Boquilha” (Luto-Cigar-Holder Head), “Cabeça Negra” (Black Head), etc., all of them made between 1914 – 1915. These works only get something like with the “Masks” from the expressionist Jawlensky in the tweenties.

But at the same time that he paints the “Heads” he proces “As Violas” (Portuguese Guitars) and “As guitarras” (Guitars), his legacy from cubism, and subject–matter that he fallows till the end of his careerin 1917, after the exibitions in Oporto and Lisbon.

Meanwhile a historical event change Amadeo’s artistic life, the first world war which brings him back to Manhufe. The same event brings the Delaunay couple with Eduardo Viana’s company, to Portugal, both of them establish in Vila do Conde. In Manhufe, far away from the new paths of mundial art, Amadeo only have a sporadic contacts with the futurists, especially with Almada Negreiros, and with Vila do Conde’s circle, where Delaunay family and Viana develop their work. After 1913, under Robert Delaunay’s influence with his works about colourful disks, Amadeo will put them in this work, however in a peculiar and personal way, using the subject in landscapes and portraits.

Althoug, before he left Paris, he still exhibits in the XXX Salon des Indépendents and sends some of his paintings to Allied Artists Association exibition in London. That Was the end of is international career. Amadeo’s Portuguese career was brief and meanless, only with two exibitions in 1916, one in Oporto and another in Lisbon.

These exibitions where Amadeo itself don’t seem very pleased – the paintings showed are a kind of dispersed works; studies done in Manhufe and some works picked in Paris from different times – Just raise curiosity, incomprehension,mockery and Almada Negreiros energetic defense.

This last, maybe the only one in the portuguese art world to have a genuine moderne vision. All over 1917 Amadeo produces the final part of his work.

This final work shows a progressiv increase of dramatic tension and defines a kind of new development of rage which change his ideological pattern.

The Futurism from 1915 and 1916 ends in a “Dadaistic” spirit, due to the author’s psychological and logical need, not from an extern cultural influence, unknowned by the painter in his desertic Portuguese exile. In 1918 his production have no meaning and in Octuber of that year he dies due to pneumonic epidemics.

MFL, JEAS