Ângelo de Sousa began painting in the late 1950s and staged his first exhibition in 1959 at the Galeria Divulgação (Porto), next to Almada Negreiros. During the period that he spent in London ( 1967-68), minimal art became more widespread in Britain and Ângelo de Sousa abandoned painting, although he took it up again in 1972. This break in his pictorial production meant an abandoning of naturalist painting and the adoption of a new reality, in line with the international art scene. In other words, the possible allusions that previously pointed to the figure disappeared, and the artist’s work underwent a significant change in the 1970s.

 

During these years, spatial refinement acquired prominence in his work with the “black series” paintings: only one area of the picture was painted, while the other was left white. This is something that ceased happening when he began working on the whole surface of the canvas, creating a monochrome effect, as occurs in Pintura (83-5- 15G) [Painting (83-5-15G)]. The surface is smooth and flat, the non-homogenous colour reveals chromatic nuances and the various geometric lines, which vary from painting to painting, are clearly accentuated in the pictorial layer, making possible a volumetric prominence. Normally, the understanding of space in Ângelo de Sousa is based on his compositional construction, made up of the lines that mark it and that sometimes intersect, through movements that apparently do not exist in the work itself, «in an unattached space»*, in the words of Ernesto de Sousa. Thus, painting frees itself from any representation and distances itself from any possible visual centre.

 

 

Patrícia Rosas

January 2010

 

* Ernesto de Sousa, in Ser Moderno… em Portugal, Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim, 1998 [1975], p. 127.