• 1915
  • Cardboard
  • Watercolour
  • Inv. 92DP1540

Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso

Untitled

At a glance, this painting looks like the plumage of an exotic animal, as the multicoloured birds and horses that Amadeo had drawn after Japanese prints some years before. However, it corresponds to a moment in his production, between 1915 and 1916, when he set out to recreate, through painting, certain motifs taken from the popular houses that he observed in the villages of Trás-os-Montes, in the extreme north of Portugal, coming up with an original grammar of simple and flat geometrical forms which, contrarily to Malevich's suprematism, are never detached from their referents. These circles and rectangles thus form numerous areas of uniform and very cheerful colour, although his pallet remained little diversified – in the letters he wrote to his friends, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso actually complained often about the lack of materials to paint: “Je travaille furieusement. Il me manque beaucoup de matériaux, mais tant pis.”* Nothing conveys Amadeo's creative energy better than this musical rhythm of colours in movement, having knitted a pictorial web of very demarcated hues that create a powerful sense of contrast, as in a “poetry of colours” that was so glorified by Almada Negreiros.

 

 

* “I am working furiously. I lack plenty of materials, but so much the worse."

 

 

AR

 

March 2011

 

TypeValueUnitSection
Height15cm
Width23,7cm
TypeDonation
DateJuly 1992
Exposição de Pintura (Abstracionismo): amadeo de souza- cardoso/ Painting Exhibition (Abstractionism): amadeo de souza- cardoso
Porto, [s.n.], 1916
Catalogue
Exposição de Pintura: amadeo de souza-cardoso/ Painting Exhibition: amadeo de souza-cardoso
Lisbon, [s.n.], 1916
Catalogue
Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (1887-1918): Ein pionier aus Portugal/ Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (1887-1918): A pioneer from Portugal
Hamburg, Ernst Barlach Haus, 2007
Catalogue
Exposição de Pintura: amadeo de souza-cardoso/ Painting Exhibition: amadeo de souza-cardoso
4 December to 12 December 1916
Lisbon Naval League, Calhariz Palace
Exposição de Pintura (Abstracionismo): amadeo de souza- cardoso/ Painting Exhibition (Abstractionism): amadeo de souza- cardoso
1 November to 12 November 1916
Ballroom of the Passos Manoel Garden
Updated on 23 january 2015

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