Architecture & the Arts - Portugal - page 1003

Azulejos - Obras do Museu Nacional do Azulejo (2009) is a colourful showcase of Portugal's dazzling tiles, with
works spanning five centuries. Find it for sale inside Lisbon's Museu Nacional do Azulejo.
Building on the works of the naturalists, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso lived a short but
productive life, experimenting with new techniques emerging in Europe. Raised in a
sleepy village outside of Amarante, he studied architecture at the Academia de Belas
Artes in Lisbon, but soon dropped out and moved to Paris. There, he found his calling as a
painter, and mingled with the leading artists and writers of the time, including Amedeo
Modigliani, Gertrude Stein, Max Jacob and many others. He experimented with impres-
sionism, and later cubism and futurism, and created a captivating body of work, though he
is little known outside of Portugal.
José Sobral de Almada Negreiros delved even deeper into futurism, inspired by the
Italian futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. His work encompassed richly hued portraits
with abstract geometrical details (such as his famous portrait of Fernando Pessoa from
1954), and he was also a sculptor, writer and critic. He managed to walk a fine line during
the Salazar regime, creating large-scale murals by public commission as well as socially
engaged works critical of Portuguese society.
THE EVOCATIVE WORLD OF PAULA REGO
The conservative Salazar years of the mid-20th century didn't create the ideal environment to nurture contempor-
ary creativity, and many artists left the country. These include Portugal's best-known living artist, Paula Rego,
who was born in Lisbon in 1935 but has been a resident of the UK since 1951. Rego's signature style developed
around fairy-tale paintings given a nightmarish twist. Her works deal in ambiguity and psychological and sexual
tension, such as The Family (1988), where a seated businessman is either being tortured or smothered with affec-
tion by his wife and daughter. Domination, fear, sexuality and grief are all recurring themes in Rego's paintings,
and the mysterious and sinister atmosphere, heavy use of chiaroscuro (stark contrasting of light and shade) and
strange distortion of scale are reminiscent of surrealists Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico.
Rego is considered one of the great early champions for painting from a female perspective and she continues
to add to a substantial volume of work. Her acclaim continues to grow, particularly with the opening of a new
museum in Cascais that showcases her work.
The Art of the Tile
Portugal's favourite decorative art is easy to spot. Polished painted tiles called azulejos
(after the Arabic al zulaycha, meaning polished stone) cover everything from churches to
train stations. The Moors introduced the art, having picked it up from the Persians, but the
Portuguese wholeheartedly adopted it.