Mutual relations
The idea of artistic collaboration, even more than group work, was important to Almada Negreiros. With reference to Orpheu, he would write, in 1965, that its participants had got together for the sake of “Art” and not because of any similarities they might have shared between them. A group is what they had never been, only collaborators. Modernity and the avant-garde had been forged in a prolific milieu of exchange, appropriation and debate, and not from isolation — in Portugal and elsewhere.
Throughout his life, Almada made the acquaintance of many artists, architects, actors and writers, with whom he worked and shared experiences on different levels. Collaboration also happened in his private life: his ballets, drawings and poems often animating junior artistic gatherings; or later, in workshop garb, when he learned artesanal techniques from stained-glass artists, ceramicists and others.
Informal gatherings and reunions continued to be a part of his day-to-day relationship with other generations: in the 1950s, he savoured friendships with the young poets Mário Cesariny and Eugénio de Andrade; Lourdes Castro performed his play Antes de Começar [Before the Beginning]; In 1946, Ernesto de Sousa invited him and Diogo de Macedo to collaborate in the conceiving of a comparative exhibition of African and modern art, later declaring himself the voluntary heir to Almada the performer; he befriended Vitor Silva Tavares and with him worked in the theatre; Maria do Céu Guerra made her debut as an actress in one of his plays; and he was always watchful of younger artists, such as Júlio Pomar, amongst others.