Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, Portugal's Modernist Genius
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This week, I'm taking you to meet a painter from my adopted country who is still far too little known in France: Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso. A painter who dared to stick sand, mirrors and even hairpins onto his canvases… more than a hundred years ago!
From Amarante to Paris
Born in 1887 near Amarante, in northern Portugal, he left for Paris in 1906 to study architecture. But the city soon took him elsewhere: to drawing and painting.
There he met Modigliani, Brancusi and the Delaunays, and exhibited with Modigliani in 1911. Two years later, he showed eight works at the famous Armory Show in New York. Not bad for a young man from the Portuguese countryside!
A short and dazzling life
The war brought him back to Portugal in 1914. In 1916, his exhibitions in Porto and Lisbon caused quite a stir: his paintings were far ahead of their time.
Then everything stopped. He died of Spanish flu in 1918, at just 30.
A painter who dared everything
Cubism, Futurism, Orphism, Portuguese folk motifs… Amadeo took a little from everything and made it his own. Shapes break apart, colours collide, and the whole canvas seems to move.
In 2016, the Grand Palais in Paris devoted a major retrospective to him. And in Amarante, a museum is dedicated to his work.
Why he speaks to me
I've had the chance to see some of his paintings in real life, and I love them, because they are not afraid of anything. Shapes, patterns and colours all meet and collide, and something joyful comes out of it.
His work makes me think of my painting Kaleidoscope Circus, with its bright colours and playful composition.
And because he is a great figure of the country I chose to call home, I really wanted you to discover him. In just thirty years, what a body of work!
If you enjoy discovering artists, you might also like my articles about Sonia and Robert Delaunay and Victor Vasarely.
And you?
Had you heard of Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso before? Tell me on WhatsApp. I'd love to know what you think of his colours.
In colour,
Lenon B
Contemporary painter, Ericeira, Portugal