From the end of the period where high reliefs mounted on suspended boards became a distinctive feature of José Escada’s work (see a magnificent example in the Modern Collection), this piece is a small-scale example of his elegant mastery over compositions featuring paper, tinplate, and acrylic plastic cut-outs, here applied to a two-dimensional collage.

Within the conch shell, a solitary desultory deposit in a space with no beginning or end, the artist reaffirms his penchant for clearly defined drawings on undefined backgrounds, suggesting a close proximity to the object portrayed: an imaginary malacology, concise and economical, focusing on the fossil, to the exclusion of all other visual information. Yet this mollusc, probably the Atlantic triton, or Charonia variegata, with its brown and white striped shell – its external skeleton –, a distinctive golden yellow gleam on the left-hand side, and a succession of pearly white, brown and beige, represents a poetic synthesis of form and matter, observed and transformed by the artist’s inner vision. Thus, more than the mere analytical details of a scientific illustration, the levels, ridges, folds, curves, twists and ripples of colour manifest the complexity of existence and reflect the paucity and toughness of the experience of life, a reminder of its brevity, along the lines of the old vanitas.

At the time of this drawing, José Escada received a study grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, having embarked upon an exploration of natural forms. Plants and vegetables, in particular, were like a transfiguration of the themes of labyrinths, entwined ropes, ties, threads, and masses of organic material (sometimes bodies), which occupied the artist for a substantial portion of his life. The inert matter of the conch shell may, therefore, be considered a variation on these overarching themes that the artist explored through images.

The conch shell was displayed at the 50 Years of Portuguese Art exhibition in 2007, celebrating half a century of sponsorship by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Ana Filipa Candeias