Amadeo de Souza Cardoso
Encyclopedia
Amadeo de Souza Cardoso (November 14, 1887 – October 25, 1918) was a Portuguese
artist, working in the style of the vanguard of his time. Although he lived a short life, his workmanship was legendary.
. At the age of 18, he entered the Superior School of Fine Arts of Lisbon
and one year later (on his 19th birthday) he went to Paris, where he intended to continue his studies but soon quit the architecture course and started to study painting. In Montparnasse
, he experimented with Impressionism
and later with Expressionism
and Cubism
, and dedicated himself exclusively to painting. His first experience was drawing, especially caricature
s. In 1908, he installed himself in number fourteen of the Cité de Falguière. There, he went to ateliers in the Académie des Beaux-Arts
and the Viti Academy of the Catalan painter Anglada Camarasa. In 1910 he stayed for some months in Brussels
and, in 1911, he displayed works in the Salon des Indépendants. He became close with artists and writers such as Gertrude Stein
, Juan Gris
, Amedeo Modigliani
, Alexander Archipenko
, Max Jacob
, the couple Robert Delaunay
and Sonia Delaunay
, and Constantin Brâncuşi
, as well as the German artist Otto Freundlich
. He was also befriended by the Italian Futurists
Gino Severini
and Umberto Boccioni
.
In 1913, Amadeo de Souza Cardoso participated in two seminal exhibitions: the Armory Show
in the USA, that travelled to New York City, Boston
, and Chicago, and the Erste Deutsche Herbstsalon at the Galerie Der Sturm
in Berlin, Germany, directed by Herwarth Walden
. Both exhibitions showed modern art to a public that was still not used to it. Amadeo was among the most commercially successful of the exhibitors at the Armory Show, as he sold seven of the eight works he showed there.
Amadeo met with Antoni Gaudí
in Barcelona
in 1914, and then left for Madrid
, where the shock of World War I
was already underway. His friend Amedeo Modigliani
showed sculptures in his Paris studio. Amadeo returned then to Portugal where he married Lucie Meynardi Peccetto. He maintained contact with other Portuguese artists and poets such as Almada Negreiros
, Santa-Rita Pintor and Teixeira de Pascoaes. On October 25, 1918, at the age of 30, he died in Espinho
, of Spanish flu
.
and by futurism
, he became one of the first modern Portuguese painters. His style is aggressive and vivid both in form and colour and the compositional structure of his works may seem random or chaotic at first sight but are clearly defined and balanced. His more innovative paintings, like "Trou de la Serrure" look like collages, and seem to pave the way to abstractionism or even dadaism.
In 1912 he published an album with twenty drawings and, after that, he copied the story of Gustave Flaubert
, “La Légende de Saint Julien to l'Hospitalier”, which were ignored by appreciators of art.
In 1913 he exhibited eight works in the Armory Show
in the USA, some of which are now in American museums. The following year, he returned to Portugal and initiated a great and meteoric career in the experimentation of new forms of expression.
In 1915 Amadeo and other artists such as Santa-Rita, Fernando Pessoa
and Mário de Sá-Carneiro
joined to shape Orpheu
, a magazine which had only two editions and is considered by many to be the exponent of Portuguese modernism. Amadeo also participated in another magazine, Portugal Futurista, which had only one edition published. In 1916, he displayed in Oporto 114 artworks with the heading “Abstraccionism”, that also was displayed in Lisbon, one and another with newness and some scandal. Cubism was in expansion throughout Europe and was an important influence in his analytical cubism. Amadeo de Souza Cardoso explored expressionism and in his last works he tried new techniques and other forms of plastic expression.
In 1925, a retrospective exhibition in France of the painter’s artwork was well received by the public and critics. Ten years later in Portugal, an award was created to distinguish modern painters: the Souza-Cardoso prize.
Amadeo de Souza Cardoso was a visionary. His ink drawings, richly decorative but always figurative, bear a relationship to those of Aubrey Beardsley
. His artworks are characterized by exotic landscapes with prodigious styles, decorative and surprising aspects with cubism drawings which transmitted elegance, mystery, imagination, emotion, poetry and symbolism.
After his death, his work remained almost unknown until 1952, when a room dedicated to his paintings in Amarante Museum gained the public's attention.
It is said that Amadeo crossed the modern painting like a comet: it was brief but intense. Although little known internationally, he is one of the most innovative artists of his time.
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
artist, working in the style of the vanguard of his time. Although he lived a short life, his workmanship was legendary.
Life
He was born in Mancelos, a parish of AmaranteAmarante, Portugal
Amarante is a city in Amarante Municipality, Portugal.The city itself has a population of 11,261 inhabitants. It sits on the banks of the Tâmega River.It is a sister city of Wiesloch, Germany.- Culture :...
. At the age of 18, he entered the Superior School of Fine Arts of Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
and one year later (on his 19th birthday) he went to Paris, where he intended to continue his studies but soon quit the architecture course and started to study painting. In Montparnasse
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
, he experimented with Impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
and later with Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
and Cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
, and dedicated himself exclusively to painting. His first experience was drawing, especially caricature
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...
s. In 1908, he installed himself in number fourteen of the Cité de Falguière. There, he went to ateliers in the Académie des Beaux-Arts
Académie des beaux-arts
The Académie des Beaux-Arts is a French learned society. It is one of the five academies of the Institut de France.It was created in 1795 as the merger of the:* Académie de peinture et de sculpture...
and the Viti Academy of the Catalan painter Anglada Camarasa. In 1910 he stayed for some months in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
and, in 1911, he displayed works in the Salon des Indépendants. He became close with artists and writers such as Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
, Juan Gris
Juan Gris
José Victoriano González-Pérez , better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France most of his life...
, Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...
, Alexander Archipenko
Alexander Archipenko
Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko was a Ukrainian avant-garde artist, sculptor, and graphic artist.-Biography:...
, Max Jacob
Max Jacob
Max Jacob was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.-Life and career:After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career...
, the couple Robert Delaunay
Robert Delaunay
Robert Delaunay was a French artist who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, cofounded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstract, reminiscent of Paul Klee...
and Sonia Delaunay
Sonia Delaunay
Sonia Delaunay was a Jewish-French artist who, with her husband Robert Delaunay and others, cofounded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. Her work extends to painting, textile design and stage set design...
, and Constantin Brâncuşi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
, as well as the German artist Otto Freundlich
Otto Freundlich
Otto Freundlich was a German painter and sculptor of Jewish origin and one of the first generation of abstract artists.-Life:...
. He was also befriended by the Italian Futurists
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
Gino Severini
Gino Severini
Gino Severini , was an Italian painter and a leading member of the Futurist movement. For much of his life he divided his time between Paris and Rome. He was associated with neo-classicism and the "return to order" in the decade after the First World War. During his career he worked in a variety of...
and Umberto Boccioni
Umberto Boccioni
Umberto Boccioni was an Italian painter and sculptor. Like other Futurists, his work centered on the portrayal of movement , speed, and technology. He was born in Reggio Calabria, Italy.-Biography:...
.
In 1913, Amadeo de Souza Cardoso participated in two seminal exhibitions: the Armory Show
Armory Show
Many exhibitions have been held in the vast spaces of U.S. National Guard armories, but the Armory Show refers to the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art that was organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors...
in the USA, that travelled to New York City, Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, and Chicago, and the Erste Deutsche Herbstsalon at the Galerie Der Sturm
Der Sturm
Der Sturm was a magazine covering the expressionism movement founded in Berlin in 1910 by Herwarth Walden. It ran weekly until monthly in 1914, and became a quarterly in 1924 until it ceased publication in 1932....
in Berlin, Germany, directed by Herwarth Walden
Herwarth Walden
Herwarth Walden was a German Expressionist artist and art expert in many disciplines...
. Both exhibitions showed modern art to a public that was still not used to it. Amadeo was among the most commercially successful of the exhibitors at the Armory Show, as he sold seven of the eight works he showed there.
Amadeo met with Antoni Gaudí
Antoni Gaudí
Antoni Gaudí i Cornet was a Spanish Catalan architect and figurehead of Catalan Modernism. Gaudí's works reflect his highly individual and distinctive style and are largely concentrated in the Catalan capital of Barcelona, notably his magnum opus, the Sagrada Família.Much of Gaudí's work was...
in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
in 1914, and then left for Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, where the shock of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
was already underway. His friend Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...
showed sculptures in his Paris studio. Amadeo returned then to Portugal where he married Lucie Meynardi Peccetto. He maintained contact with other Portuguese artists and poets such as Almada Negreiros
Almada Negreiros
José Sobral de Almada Negreiros was a Portuguese artist. He was born in the then colony of São Tomé e Príncipe, the son of a Portuguese father, António Lobo de Almada Negreiros, and a Santomean mother, Elvira Freire Sobral...
, Santa-Rita Pintor and Teixeira de Pascoaes. On October 25, 1918, at the age of 30, he died in Espinho
Espinho, Portugal
Espinho is a city in Espinho Municipality in Portugal. It is a reputed beach resort and a zone of legal gambling with a casino - Casino Solverde. Its fair - Feira de Espinho, having been first organised in 1894, is well known in Portugal...
, of Spanish flu
Spanish flu
The 1918 flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic, and the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus . It was an unusually severe and deadly pandemic that spread across the world. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin...
.
Work
His early works, under the tutelage of the Spanish painter Anglada Camarasa, were stylistically close to impressionism. Around 1910, influenced both by cubismCubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
and by futurism
Futurism (art)
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...
, he became one of the first modern Portuguese painters. His style is aggressive and vivid both in form and colour and the compositional structure of his works may seem random or chaotic at first sight but are clearly defined and balanced. His more innovative paintings, like "Trou de la Serrure" look like collages, and seem to pave the way to abstractionism or even dadaism.
In 1912 he published an album with twenty drawings and, after that, he copied the story of Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...
, “La Légende de Saint Julien to l'Hospitalier”, which were ignored by appreciators of art.
In 1913 he exhibited eight works in the Armory Show
Armory Show
Many exhibitions have been held in the vast spaces of U.S. National Guard armories, but the Armory Show refers to the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art that was organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors...
in the USA, some of which are now in American museums. The following year, he returned to Portugal and initiated a great and meteoric career in the experimentation of new forms of expression.
In 1915 Amadeo and other artists such as Santa-Rita, Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa, born Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa , was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic and translator described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language.-Early years in Durban:On 13 July...
and Mário de Sá-Carneiro
Mário de Sá-Carneiro
Mário de Sá-Carneiro was a Portuguese poet and writer. He is one of the most well known of the "Geração D'Orpheu".-Life:...
joined to shape Orpheu
Geração de Orpheu
The Geração de Orpheu or Grupo de Orfeu refers to a group of men largely responsible for the introduction of Modernism to the arts and letters of Portugal through the vehicle of their tri-monthly publication, Orpheu ....
, a magazine which had only two editions and is considered by many to be the exponent of Portuguese modernism. Amadeo also participated in another magazine, Portugal Futurista, which had only one edition published. In 1916, he displayed in Oporto 114 artworks with the heading “Abstraccionism”, that also was displayed in Lisbon, one and another with newness and some scandal. Cubism was in expansion throughout Europe and was an important influence in his analytical cubism. Amadeo de Souza Cardoso explored expressionism and in his last works he tried new techniques and other forms of plastic expression.
In 1925, a retrospective exhibition in France of the painter’s artwork was well received by the public and critics. Ten years later in Portugal, an award was created to distinguish modern painters: the Souza-Cardoso prize.
Amadeo de Souza Cardoso was a visionary. His ink drawings, richly decorative but always figurative, bear a relationship to those of Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His drawings, done in black ink and influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A....
. His artworks are characterized by exotic landscapes with prodigious styles, decorative and surprising aspects with cubism drawings which transmitted elegance, mystery, imagination, emotion, poetry and symbolism.
After his death, his work remained almost unknown until 1952, when a room dedicated to his paintings in Amarante Museum gained the public's attention.
It is said that Amadeo crossed the modern painting like a comet: it was brief but intense. Although little known internationally, he is one of the most innovative artists of his time.
Selection of artworks
- Retrato de Francisco Cardoso (Portrait of Francisco Cardoso)
- Menina dos Cravos (Carnation Girl)
- Cozinha da Casa de Manhufe (Manhufe's Kitchen)
- Entrada (Entrance)
- Pintura (Painting), Brut 300 TSF
- Os falcões (Hawks), álbum XX dessins, publ. in Paris, 1912
- O castelo (Castle) 1912
- Pintura (Painting), Coty, 1917
- Máscara de olho verde (The Green-eyed Mask), 1916