Marcelino Vespeira

Last updated

Marcelino Macedo Vespeira (Samouco, Alcochete, 9 September 1925- Lisbon, 22 February 2002) was a Portuguese painter and graphic artist. A leading figure in the surrealist movement in Portugal, Vespeira built a long and diversified work. It emerged in the mid-1940s in the context of Portuguese neo-realism, it reached a high point in the surrealist and intensely personal works made between 1948 and 1952; after that he went through abstractionism to return, in more recent decades, to the themes and forms from his surrealist period.

Life and career

He took the course at the Escola de Artes Decorativas António Arroio, in Lisbon, and attended the 1st year of Architecture at the School of Fine Arts in Lisbon. After that he started working in graphic arts; he was invited by painter Bernardo Marques to collaborate in the magazine Colóquio/Artes, of which he became graphic director in 1962. [1]

An oppositionist to the far-right New State regime, in the early period of his work he was linked to neo-realism, creating works such as Apertado pela Fome (Tightened by Hunger) (1945), with which he participated in the 1st General Exhibition of Plastic Arts of the SNBA, in 1946. Although neo-realistic in the theme, in works like this "Vespeira already shows a formal language that indicates surrealizing atmospheres". [2] In the following year he was one of the founders of the Surrealist Group of Lisbon, together with António Pedro, Cândido Costa Pinto, Fernando de Azevedo, Mário Cesariny and José-Augusto França, among others. His work then quickly evolved into a coherent and personal language. [3] In 1949 he participated in the group's first and only exhibition, where two collaborative works (Cadavre Exquis) were presented: in one, he worked with Fernando de Azevedo; in the other, with large dimensions, with fellow painters António Pedro, Moniz Pereira, António Domingues and Fernando de Azevedo.

Marked by an accentuated erotic character, endowed with great formal and chromatic sensuality, Vespeira's painting uses a lexicon of contrasting, round, pointed shapes, which allow him to cross metamorphoses of the female body or explicit sexual allusions with evocations of the animal world and vegetable. According to Emília Ferreira: "In a game of themes evoking ritualizing situations, we will see the emergence of the bodies of women with large round breasts, vulvas, erect phalluses, birds, flowers, horns ...", like in his famous paintings Parque dos Insultos (Park of the Insults) (1949) or Simumis (1949). [4]

From the mid-1950s, his work changed once again. Vespeira strives for abstraction, first in a geometric style that he quickly left, then into a lyrical option closer to gestural informalism. He also started to name the tables with a simple sequential numbering. [5] Often dominated by reds, its palette thickens; later, in the 1960s, the composition became more fluid, formally and chromatically. At the invitation of the painter Lino António, his former teacher, Vespeira taught at the António Arroio School but had to leave due to pressure from the Ministry of Education. In the following decade Vespeira re-approaches the original surrealist universe (in the 1980s he also uses collage), in works where he relapses on ancient themes and recovers "the sensual view of the world, in its familiar hybridism", crossing the contours of the landscape and the music with the lines of the female body. For a period he was the designer of the arts and letters magazine Colóquio, Revista de Artes e Letras, published by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. [6]

His long history of work in graphic arts and resistance to the Estado Novo continued after the overthrow of the dictatorship on April 25, 1974, leading him to actively collaborate with the Armed Forces Movement. Vespeira was the author of the well-known symbol of the MFA.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Calouste Gulbenkian</span> British-Armenian businessman (1869–1955)

Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, nicknamed "Mr Five Per Cent", was a British-Armenian businessman and philanthropist. He played a major role in making the petroleum reserves of the Middle East available to Western development and is credited with being the first person to exploit Iraqi oil. Gulbenkian travelled extensively and lived in a number of cities including Istanbul, London, Paris, and Lisbon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Calouste Gulbenkian Museum</span> Art museum in Lisbon, Portugal

The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum houses one of the world's most important private art collections. It includes works from Ancient Egypt to the early 20th century, spanning the arts of the Islamic World, China and Japan, as well as the French decorative arts, the jewellery of René Lalique and some of the most important painters of all times works such as Rembrandt, Monet, Rubens, Manet, Renoir, Degas and Turner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">João Cutileiro</span> Portuguese sculptor (1937–2021)

João Cutileiro OSE was a Portuguese sculptor. He is responsible for a number of controversial female nudes in marble.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Júlio Pomar</span> Portuguese painter (1926–2018)

Júlio Artur da Silva Pomar, GOL, GCM was a Portuguese painter and visual artist. He was often considered the greatest Portuguese painter of his generation.

António Pedro da Costa was a Portuguese painter, potter, journalist and writer.

António Dacosta was a Portuguese painter, poet and art critic and a pioneer of the surrealist movement in Portugal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carlos Botelho</span> Portuguese painter and cartoonist (1899–1982)

Carlos Botelho was a Portuguese painter, illustrator, comics artist, political cartoonist, satirist and caricaturist, whose works are shown at the Chiado Museum and at the Modern Art Centre José de Azeredo Perdigão / Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in Lisbon. Botelho was one of the most relevant Portuguese artists of his generation.

António Campos was one of the pioneer filmmakers of visual anthropology in Portugal. Mainly using pure documentary techniques, he shot ethnographic films and tried docufiction. As well as in fictional films, he used the methods of direct cinema to portrait the life of ancient human communities (ethnofiction) of his country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manuel Botelho</span> Portuguese artist

Manuel Botelho is a Portuguese artist. He lives and works in Estoril, Portugal, and teaches at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon.

António Palolo was a Portuguese artist and painter.

Sofia Areal is a Portuguese abstract painter, whose works adhere mostly to organic non-geometrical forms and a strong chromatic focus. Besides painting and drawing, Areal's work involves collage, textile design, and scenography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gulbenkian Park</span>

The Gulbenkian Park also known as Gulbenkian Garden is located in Lisbon, Portugal. It was created in 1969 and is part of the cultural center where the headquarters of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Gulbenkian Museum and the José de Azeredo Perdigão Modern Art Centre are situated enriching the cultural importance of the garden.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Álvaro Perdigão</span>

Álvaro Perdigão was a Portuguese painter.

Alberto Carneiro was a Portuguese artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reynaldo dos Santos</span> Portuguese physician and historian

Reynaldo dos Santos was a Portuguese physician, writer, and art historian. As a physician, he was a pioneer in the fields of vascular surgery and urology; as an art historian, he published numerous works on 15th-century Portuguese art, including on the Manueline style and on the paintings of Nuno Gonçalves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cruzeiro Seixas</span> Portuguese artist and poet (1920–2020)


Cruzeiro Seixas, full name Artur Manuel Rodrigues do Cruzeiro Seixas, was a "man who paints" and a Portuguese poet.

Rosa Carvalho is a Portuguese artist.

Carlos Mascarenhas Martins de Azevedo was a Professor in the history of art and architecture and a curator at the National Museum of Contemporary Art Portugal. Considered an important figure in the promotion of Portuguese culture, as well as for his research work, he was honoured with a colloquium “Homenagem a Carlos de Azevedo” on the centenary of his birth that took place at the São Roque Museum of the Santa Casa Da Misericórdia de Lisboa in May 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madalena Perdigão</span> Portuguese cultural administrator and educator

Maria Madalena Bagão da Silva Biscaia de Azeredo Perdigão, played an important role in the cultural life of Portugal in the second half of the 20th century, particularly as a result of her association with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, where she founded and directed the Foundation's Music Service and later directed the Serviço de Animação, Criação Artística e Educação pela Arte.

<i>Colóquio</i> Group of magazines published by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (1971–)

Colóquio is the umbrella title for a series of magazines, published by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, capital of Portugal, from January 1959. These have been dedicated to different areas of knowledge: arts, letters, sciences, education, and society. Only one of those, Colóquio Letras, is still published.

References

  1. Ferreira, Emília - "Marcelino Vespeira". In: A.A.V.V. – Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão: Roteiro da coleção. Lisbon, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2004, p. 90 (Portuguese)
  2. A.A.V.V. – Os anos 40 na arte portuguesa, tomo 1. Lisboa, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1982, p. 90 (Portuguese)
  3. França, José-Augusto, A Arte em Portugal no Século XX. Lisbon, Livraria Bertrand, 1991, p. 390 (Portuguese)
  4. A.A.V.V. – Os anos 40 na arte portuguesa, tomo 1. Lisboa, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1982, p. 90 (Portuguese)
  5. Silva, Raquel Henriques da, "Marcelino Vespeira". In: A.A.V.V. – 50 Anos de Arte Portuguesa. Lisbon, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2007 (Portuguese)
  6. Ferreira, Emília - "Marcelino Vespeira". In: A.A.V.V. – Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão: Roteiro da coleção. Lisbon, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2004, p. 90(Portuguese)